


The First Time...

by AtlinMerrick



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: All chapters stand alone, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Depression, First Time, Humor, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:18:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 26,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a first time for every thing, for every little thing. Here are short tales about the first time Sherlock and John had sex in public; the first time Sherlock set his privates on fire; the first time Greg met Mycroft...and so much more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Time…Sherlock Heard John Swear a Blue Streak

In this, his first thirty five years, Sherlock has:

* Tasted more than a dozen kinds of blood, including human, sheep, goat, cat, fox, dog, and parakeet.

* Had his arse thoroughly groped by a twenty-eight stone sumo on a dramatically lit dance floor.

* Stuck his ungloved hand into a pile of live maggots to fish out a half-eaten, severed foot.

* Stripped off and swam naked in the Thames to reach a crime scene before Anderson.

Which is the moderately dramatic, somewhat bile-raising, slightly long way of saying Sherlock Holmes is not a delicate flower, easily startled or nonplussed.

So it was surprising that hearing John's use of vigorous invective for the first time, early in their relationship, truly surprised Sherlock. And then it did something else entirely.

Of course it was unequivocally Sherlock's fault that John felt the overwhelming urge to swear himself blue. Sherlock, of course, would say the error was John's. After all _he_ had insisted they take the tube.

"I can still feel it John."

Six words. That was all it took to start John's heart pounding. He glanced right. Half a dozen feet from him, a woman stood holding a grab rail, reading her _Financial Times._

"Don't, Sherlock."

A half dozen feet behind John two seniors bickered.

"So thick."

Another few dozen riders were scattered throughout the car.

"Really, don't."

John was pretty sure no one could hear them.

"And heavy, very heavy."

He _hoped_ no one could hear them.

"Please?"

It was hard to tell however…

"And it's hotter. Hotter than the rest of you."

…over the deafening roar of his own blood.

"Oh god."

They'd been lovers for nearly four months now, and Sherlock was just starting to get over his sexual self-consciousness. Being Sherlock, he did not tip-toe into confidence, he careened into it wildly, with the white-hot intensity of a supernova.

"Do it again, John."

Hence, teasing-tormenting-turning his lover on in public.

"Please stop."

By saying extremely sexual things.

"But deeper this time."

Each sentence, overheard on its own, did not necessarily sound sexual.

"You need to stop."

Unless you knew Sherlock.

"And harder. So. Much. Harder."

And you were John.

"Oh god."

Today it was a sort of revenge. For making Sherlock take the tube to and from a case. ("It's called money, Sherlock. As in we need to _save_ some.") Not that Sherlock _needed_ a reason to exploit his new-found power.

"Please don't."

A power that did not necessarily require words.

"I mean it."

No one looked twice at the man slowly sucking the tip of his thumb, as if lost in thought.

"I'm not joking."

But John, who woke up this morning to find Sherlock lavishly sucking his own fingers—"I'm teaching myself how to fellate you better"—knew what the sensuous git was really playing at.

"Oh god."

There are more than a dozen and a half stops from Heathrow back to the Baker Street tube station. The trip—including a change at Green Park—takes about an hour.

"You can't do this."

More than enough time to run through an entire repertoire of lewd conduct.

"You're killing me."

Chin lifted high, Sherlock ran long fingers down the gloriously vast expanse of his neck.

"I'm going to kill you."

He let the tip of his index finger drag suggestively through the hollow at the base of his throat.

"Oh god."

At this point John had been so hard for so long that he was light-headed from lack of blood to his extremities. Yet it would only get worse before it got better.

"I'm going to die."

Because Sherlock essentially had no shame.

"If I'm dead I'm of no use to you."

Still, he _can_ be discreet, so only John saw him run his middle finger up the darkly-clothed length of his own cock.

"Then again, maybe you'd like me better that way."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth John regretted them.

"Never, John."

Because he knew he'd just invited Sherlock to again use _his_ words.

"I'm begging you, Sherlock."

It was almost imperceptible, the slow, rhythmic thrust of Sherlock's hips.

"Oh _yes_ please."

John tried to close his eyes, or at least look away.

"Stop?"

But he was a sandy-haired cobra, entranced by a six foot flute.

"Beg me John…I'm begging you."

Euphemistically speaking.

"Oh god."

Sherlock stilled his hips on an outward thrust, arched his neck, sighed.

"Ooooh, _John."_

* * *

It's just a little over a quarter mile from the Baker Street tube station to 221B. Call it a five minute stroll.

"The average length of an erect human penis is approximately fourteen centimeters."

Which can feel like a very long time when you're walking funny.

"I need to measure yours, John."

And are breathing as if you're in the middle of a bloody half marathon.

"Preferably on my knees."

And so damn _damp_ down below you need a change of pants.

"With my mouth."

It took John three goes, but he finally _thrust_ the key into the lock's _hole_ as _hard_ and as _deep_ as it would go.

"Or I could always use my hand."

Sherlock took the lead inside. He did not shut up while he _spread_ his long _legs_ to slowly _mount_ the stairs.

"Or maybe I could use my cock, John."

John was mesmerized into utter silence by the hypnotic sway of the plushness in front of him.

"I could measure mine and then…thrust it…next to yours."

Finally Sherlock unlocked the door of their flat. John stepped past him and his mouth promptly sort of burst into flame.

"Jesus fucking Christ on a fancy fucking motor bike Sherlock—" The good doctor started peeling clothes off with reckless abandon "—if you don't bloody well bugger me _right_ now and so god damned hard I get a fucking nose bleed I am going to cry. Fuck _me_ why the absolute flaming _hell_ are you still bloody well _dressed_ would you fucking get _on_ me and get your god damned dick _in_ me for all that is god damned fucking holy?"

For several seconds Sherlock blinked so hard he made himself dizzy. Then he began yanking clothes off as fast as they would fall while a now-naked John crowded close and whispered sweet nothings.

"Shag me."

Sherlock's frantic fingers briefly snarled at the collar of his shirt.

"Fuck me."

No such issue presented itself at trousers or pants.

"Lick me."

Sherlock kicked one shoe off so hard he put a hole in the wall.

"Suck me."

Sherlock fell on John like a starving animal. John growled.

Twenty minutes later they were a gently snoring heap of tangled limbs on the sitting room rug.

And _that_ was the very first time Sherlock heard John swear a blue streak, but certainly it was not the last.

Oh fucking _hell,_ no.

_There's a first time for every little thing. This new series will be about them. The first time John gave Sherlock a blow job in public; the first time Mycroft kissed Greg (yeah, the stories will be about everyone); the first time the 221B boys had make-up sex (not what you're thinking); talked about kids; or bought Sherlock patent-black stilettos._

_[These two delicious gifs](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/10955521744/platonicteamugs-john-i-dont-think-this-is)—and MarieLikesToDraw's command that I write something based off them—are what inspired this series_ _. As I said, that'll publish next. In the meantime…what first times do you want to read about?_

_P.S. Author's note amended to say if you love sweary John you can find more of him in[F*** You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/465462/chapters/817590). Ahem._


	2. …John Met the Black Dog

The black dog.

That's not what John called it back then. That's not what Sherlock called it either. They didn't have a name for it, not until later. Not until it had caused four fights, a broken tea mug, enraged silence, and at least one bout of apology sex that was without a doubt the worst sex they'd ever had.

The broken crockery, the yelling, the rage, all of it was John's fault. He's used to feeling useful, is John, but it's hard to be of use to a man in a mood so dark that he will sit for hours in shallow-breathing silence, indifferent to your words, unresponsive to your touch, seemingly blind even when you're on your knees in front of him begging.

They'd been married nearly three year the first time the black dog came for Sherlock. Later John would have a name for it—situational depression. Later he would come to understand the triggers—a prolonged lack of engaging cases or, much worse, the sense of worthlessness Sherlock often felt when he failed to solve one of the more brutal crimes.

Why the depression was kept at bay for so long John couldn't say (Sherlock told him once, but John doesn't believe _he_ could possibly be _that_ interesting, not for five _years),_ but once it emerged it did not tip-toe into their lives. No, the dog came howling from the dark, a sharp-toothed monster that could consume all the air in a room, all the hope in their hearts, all the patience of one exceedingly patient man.

"Tell me what's wrong, Sherlock, please."

Like grief, there's no _right_ way to go about depression. Some people sleep too much, others too little. Some eat, others starve. Some get reckless, others don't. The one almost-unifying symptom is the silence.

"I want to help you."

It's not a willful thing, this silence. It's not even apathy. It's an almost literal inability to form the words that say, "I am in so much pain that I am numb…all of me…my heart my head my mouth my tongue."

So John didn't understand it the first time, how could he? He'd lived with this wildly willful, impossibly strong, ridiculously vibrant creature for so long that of course he thought the silence was a choice, that the empty eyes were some strange game, maybe ploy, certainly experiment.

"I'm not fucking kidding, Sherlock."

John's ashamed to remember how quickly he moved from understanding to shouting to threats that first time.

"Fine, whatever, I'll be back later. Maybe. Play games on your own time."

Only after he'd returned at three a.m. to find Sherlock still sitting in that same chair by the window, staring at nothing, did John realize something was truly wrong. Only then did he go to his knees at Sherlock's knees and apologize, at first with words, then with silence, then with tears.

It took two more visits from the black dog—and those four fights, that bad sex, the broken mug—before there was an actual diagnosis, advice, coping strategies.

Time, as it turns out, is the only real remedy that works, but they do what they can with what they have.

Sherlock can be heard to self-talk when he thinks he's alone, reassuring himself that he's done everything he could in a particular case.

John holds interesting cold cases in reserve and strews them in front of Sherlock like a carpet of grim little daisies when he senses his sweetheart is feeling darkly bored or useless.

They both attempt to be communicative and exceedingly patient with one another and often (though not always) succeed.

And when the black dog is at Sherlock's throat despite all of this, he will muster every last bit of energy in him and he'll lay himself down on their bed and he'll wait. After awhile John will find him and he'll stretch out on Sherlock's back and tuck his face tight against Sherlock's neck and though the black dog won't let him say it, not then, at those times it's the only thing that can make Sherlock feel…anything.

 _I promised a ribald post for this second entry of_ The First Time… _but Livia Carica created artwork that is so relentlessly beautiful I needed to write something for it and wanted to post when she did. Please tell her what you think of her beautiful[Black Dog artwork](http://livia-carica.livejournal.com/20022.html)._


	3. …John Gave Sherlock a Blow Job in Public

John knows Sherlock's body better than Sherlock does.

"I told you to keep your hands off those mould spores."

For example, the good doctor knows his lover is a festival of recessive traits, from the attached ear lobes to the ginger beard, from pale sloe eyes to lofty height. Yes, yes, Sherlock knows he _has_ those features, but that, when combined all in one person, they are rare to the point of statistical absurdity, of that he has no clue.

"Because you're not impenetrable, you know. You're not Superman."

The good doctor also knows that when Sherlock gets nine hours of sleep he works better, thinks better, eats better, hell he even _comes_ better. Don't mention this to Sherlock—who's been sleeping _ten_ hours _every_ night for the last _month—_ because right now the good doctor is so spectacularly well-shagged he would rather eat live bugs than upset this particular apple cart.

"No, maybe you are Superman. And those spores are your Kryptonite."

John knows that Sherlock's heart beats unusually slowly—fifty-two beats per minute instead of the more common sixty-five or seventy. He also knows that one reason Sherlock reacts so strongly to noxious substances—caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, mould spores—is the slow tick of that heart.

"I've worked with them before John," the man in question whispered. "Thisss always happensss."

Which goes far toward explaining why Sherlock was right now standing next to him in museum dark, fidgeting, panting lowly, muscles so tense against expected pain that his body was just about vibrating.

"The guard probably won't be back round for another—" John checked his watch. "—twenty-two minutes, you need to sit down and breathe, love."

Of course Sherlock didn't sit, and everyone knows how he feels about breathing. And of course not two hours previous he'd gone ahead and put his hands all over those mould spores John had warned him about. Spores he'd apparently known would trigger a migraine due to, you know, mildly _poisoning_ him.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock pressed his back harder against the pillar behind which they hid, peered around it briefly, and in lieu of answering his lover he grunted plaintively.

The good doctor grunted back in a general bad ass way, pressed two fingers to Sherlock's throat, felt a thrumming, reedy pulse. "That's it, we're going home. We can—"

"No, John. I'm fine. I'm fine. It's—" Sherlock clenched and unclenched his hands so hard his trembling could be seen even in the half-light. "—good. It hasn't started yet, it's—we just need to catch her in the act and then we can go."

John, it has possibly been said to the point of distraction, is a tiny tyrant. If he decides to brook no argument _he will damn well brook no argument._ It is not, however, a super power he uses lightly. And while right now John wanted to issue a directive so hard he was ready to _bite_ something, he didn't.

Because, as we said, John knows Sherlock's body better than Sherlock does.

So the good doctor stepped in front of his lover and whispered, "Stay still, love."

Of course Sherlock did the opposite. He poked his head round the pillar again, he fretted, he wriggled. While the consulting detective can shrug off being choked half to death, while he can blithely cope with cuts and burns, while he can completely take bruises, sprains, and strains in his long-legged stride, there is one assault upon his person Sherlock can't deal with _at all._ Not even a little bit.

Headaches.

"Sherlock, be still."

The first push of pressure, the first dreaded glimmer of an aura, the first delicate bloom of pain and he becomes a frightened, fretting, fidgeting child. (Well wouldn't you if just about everything you value about yourself was _in your head?)_

"Still!"

Sherlock stopped moving.

John pressed a hand briefly to his sweetheart's cheek, then reached for his lover's belt. "Trust me, okay?"

Sherlock frowned down at his doctor and whispered, "John, what are you doing?"

The belt buckle made a high, faint tinkling sound.

"John?"

Button.

"John?"

Hook.

"John?"

Zipper.

"Why are you doing that?"

Trousers were pushed to thighs.

"Well my sweet, when an army doctor loves a consulting detective very, _very_ much…"

Pants followed trousers.

"…he's willing to personally administer one of the best drugs there is for derailing a migraine before it starts."

John dropped to his knees—Sherlock winced hearing bones meet marble—licked his lips.

"An _orgasm."_

John glanced up at Sherlock. He thought about waiting for a reply. Thought about asking for permission. Then he thought better of those thoughts and he simply shoved Sherlock's dick in his mouth.

There. Problem solved.

Well, almost.

Because yes, John knows Sherlock's body better than Sherlock does, but the man wasn't going to make this easy. Because he really was a little frantic, a little afraid. So he kept up that damn fidgeting and wriggling. He said John's name in short bursts, then groaned himself silent. He rested his hands on John's head, then clenched those hands into fists until John squinched his eyes shut.

But that was fine. It was all fine. John just held on tighter. Mostly in the mouth region.

Meanwhile, off in the distance a security guard paced slowly, almost silently. Ready, in seventeen minutes, to _not_ secure the building from one very slick thief.

Maybe.

In the meantime she would not return to the Asian antiquities wing of the Aberdon Museum for precisely sixteen and one half minutes.

Maybe.

Which was definitely on John's mind, because John (he insists) is not really the public sex type.

Except.

Sherlock's restless squirming? His agitation and something very like panic? They were transmissible. But the transmission wasn't perfect, for those characteristics morphed on their way to John, turning into eagerness, arousal, and an all-purpose sense of fuck-yes-and-damn-the-torpedoes.

Which was interesting.

Because John's emotions? They were transmissible. And the transmission was perfect. So Sherlock's fidgeting and panting soon became eagerness, arousal, and a fast-growing hard-on.

However.

It wasn't long before Sherlock's fidgeting returned. Yet judging from the piston-like pumping of his hips this now had nothing to do with expected pain.

"John, John, John…"

The good doctor responded to his name first with a low and throaty growl, then pulled his mouth off Sherlock's cock and looked up. And more than he will _ever_ admit Sherlock really, really, _really_ loves looking down at John when his lover is on his knees and looking up at him.

Sliding one hand to the back of Sherlock's thigh and another around his cock, John is quite happy to admit how much he loves looking at an unraveling Sherlock, loves watching what he can do to his sweetheart with just the skill of one talented hand.

"Help me, baby."

Sherlock grunted with pleasure at the diminutive, slid long pale fingers over John's, wrapped them around the other man's fist, until they were jerking him together.

"Yes," John said, fingers digging into Sherlock's thigh, "Yes."

Sherlock grunted again, tightening his grip over John's hand, both of them stroking faster.

John's tongue snaked round his mouth briefly, then found itself something to do, lapping with hot, slow strokes at precome.

_"John…"_

The good doctor swiped his tongue one more time across the head of Sherlock's cock, then rose on his knees. "Harder," he whispered.

Sherlock obeyed, watching John face. Oh god that expression, his expression, every time Sherlock sees that _look_ on his lover's face, that hungry look, his desire is so sudden, so sharp it hurts.

"Come," John sighed, then leaned in close and opened his mouth. And _that's_ when Sherlock finally listened to his lover, doing exactly as John commanded.

Both of them groaned softly, for quite awhile.

And that is the story of how John gave Sherlock his first blow job in public.

(Oh, and by the way, they caught the security guard and the thief in the act.)

(With two and a half minutes to spare, even.)

(Oh, and Lestrade was the only one who noticed that Sherlock's zipper was half undone.)

(He very nicely didn't say anything, though.)

(Well, not then, anyway.)

 _This was actually the first story I wrote for_ "The First Time…" _and it was inspired by[those gifs that roared through Tumblr awhile back](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/10955521744/platonicteamugs-john-i-dont-think-this-is) (they also explain why Sherlock's fidgeting so much in the story) and MarieLikesToDraw's demand that I write something for them. I need to get her a unicorn because already I love the possibilities of this series more than, um, unicorns. Any first times you'd like to see, for any of the characters?_


	4. ...They Danced

He can move with an economy of gesture, or with the ferocity of passion. He can be noisy as a tank, or glide in silence if he so desires.

But always John Watson moves with the grace of truth. He never postures, dear John Watson, about his body you'll find nothing sly or hidden. There's never a lie in his gestures, not even half-truths or uncertainties.

It's the first thing Sherlock saw in those first seconds, those forever-remembered moments when his life changed. John's posture, the truths his body told that even John didn't see.

Sherlock's grace is different. It's purely physical, long limbs carefully controlled, beautiful tools under the command of his brain and nothing more.

Well, not until a small army-issue earthquake rattled the contents of his life and Sherlock found that those long limbs were good for other things.

Like dancing.

That first time they danced a night wind was whipping cold rain against the windows and Sherlock was stretched out long on the sofa, exactly four minutes and twenty two seconds from turning irritable and stroppy.

John was wherever John goes when he's not with Sherlock, a place Sherlock is not always sure of, though that's generally fine because John's promised he'll always return from those places and Sherlock wants to believe him and so he does.

In this case John was with Mrs. Hudson and then he wasn't, then he was standing beside the sofa with his hand out and Sherlock took a deep breath as if he'd been holding it all that time and at the same time he took John's hand.

_Where are we going? What are we doing?_

These are questions Sherlock didn't ask. He didn't want to know. On nights like these, when he's just four minutes and twenty-two seconds away from irritable and stroppy he never wants to know, he wants to be surprised, even if the surprise is as simple as a quick shag or a slow dinner or both of them squeezing down into the same armchair to watch the telly.

Just then John did surprise him and not with something familiar.

With the radio low but loud enough, he tugged Sherlock close, held him hard round the waist, and lacing their hands together he began moving slowly.

And they danced.

Sherlock sees himself as many things: Brilliant. Brave. Interesting. And yes, he also knows he's long and slender, but here's something else he knows: even despite that he is very much not naturally elegant.

He _seems_ so, but Sherlock's elegance and his grace are like his coat: He puts them on because they're of use in the greater world. When he's home it's a different story. At home he hops about like a six year old at Christmas. He runs fingers through his hair until it stands up funny. He slumps on things. He curls up into petulant little balls, all spine and elbow and ankle.

This is the long way of saying that Sherlock definitely doesn't see himself as a dancer. So when John pulled him close that first time, steadily guiding him across the sitting room floor, Sherlock was all spine and elbow and ankle.

If this had been their first date John probably would have felt all those tense muscles, and he'd have let go.

This wasn't their first date. And so John didn't let go.

For John sees himself as many things: Level-headed. Driven. Focused. And put on this earth to harness, help, and yes, guide, the force of nature that is Sherlock Holmes.

So John Watson, who apparently can smell a storm of irritable and stroppy as it gathers, excused himself from socializing with his landlady—depths unplumbed, that one; he's still learning a great many surprising things about Mrs. Hudson—and he came home to find his husband (two years, four months, six days) staring down the rain, face a dark cloud of drawn brows, pursed lips, and squinting eyes.

And so John held out his hand.

Sherlock let himself be tugged tall, held close, and slowly moved about, and one minute passed, then two, and by the third he'd draped long arms over John's shoulders, slid fingers up into John's hair, pressed his cheek to the top of John's head, and it wasn't until ten minutes later that Sherlock realized he'd been humming most of that time, humming a song he didn't even know he knew, and that John was moving them to the tempo of Sherlock's slow heartbeat.

About then Sherlock realized another thing: He doesn't always know where John goes, or what he does when he gets there, or even how long he'll be gone. But so long as John comes back then the rain is all right, the boredom is bearable, and Sherlock's heart, it will continue to beat.


	5. …John and Sherlock Slept. Together.

Eighteen months, five days.

Eleven months, twenty-two days.

Six months exactly.

Eight weeks, one day.

Fourteen days, six hours, thirty-two minutes.

For the first two years of their relationship—until they got married and the count started again—you could've asked Sherlock how long he and John had been together and he would have had an exact figure.

Few asked, of course, it's not a common question. That didn't stop Sherlock from having the answer.

Buttoning his shirt of a morning, sliding a belt round hips, finger-combing curls, he would reflexively count the months, the weeks, the days.

On momentous occasions—the first time John said "I love you," where others could hear; the first, second, and third time Sherlock let John tell him what to do _and_ _he_ _did_ _it_ —Sherlock could even provide the hours and minutes as well.

It was very early in their relationship, and today was one such occasion.

* * *

_Three days, two hours, eight minutes._

Alone in his bed, Sherlock stared at the dark.

When he was only little he'd hated the dark, with all its mystery and silence. Yet like so many small children Sherlock wanted badly to be big, so he didn't tell anyone he was afraid. Like so many small children—and big men—he mistook a reasonable fear for weakness and so he suffered alone.

In the dark of four a.m., at 221B Baker Street, three days, two hours, eight minutes after becoming John Watson's lover, Sherlock Holmes discovered that he was so very over that.

He could still hear the dream…an echo of sorts. Crying. That was all he could remember, just the sound, the sensation, the simple heartache of crying.

Who had cried? He had no clue. Why did they cry? He couldn't tell you. All he could say was that the dream left him tired, cold with unshed tears, and lonely.

_I don't have to be here. In this bed. By myself._

John had asked him to stay. Six and a half hours ago, after they'd made love (who says that? even in their head? Sherlock apparently), and Sherlock had said yes, yes I will, and even he heard the gratitude in his own voice, but then he'd remembered a stupid experiment (since when does Sherlock append 'stupid' to any experiment? Since it took him out of John's bed, apparently) and he'd had gone to the kitchen for just long enough to add the reagent, record the results and—

—then it was four hours later that he realized he'd fallen into the same old pattern, the one that kept him up all night shivering in the cold flat but so distracted by the fire or fizz of a work in progress that he didn't care.

Well now he cared, but standing in the hall by John's bedroom door he heard soft breathing indicative of sleep, and so he went to his own room and he sat cross-legged on his bed and to while away the dark he lit it up with memory.

* * *

"I will hear you when you call."

It had been only ten p.m., maybe eleven, but they lay on John's bed talking so softly, as if there was someone nearby to disturb.

At first Sherlock hadn't understood why John said what he did. John always heard him, and John almost always came when Sherlock called.

The good doctor wrapped his arms around Sherlock's waist, pressed his ear to his lover's belly and he continued to make grand pronouncements, one right after the other.

"I will come when you need me."

It was still so early in their relationship—he couldn't not call it that, even if he feared it was a dream he'd wake up from any minute—for Sherlock to have precise expectations. Expectations like: Bed = sex. Bed does not equal grand pronouncements. Well not until bed = sex.

So instead of insisting with body or with words that bed equal sex right now please, Sherlock pushed long fingers through short sandy hair and he felt himself get erect in sensually slow degrees as John made his sensually slow way down Sherlock's body, saying big things in small, sweet ways.

"I will soothe you if you cry."

Sherlock hadn't said much in reply to any of these words because what do you say when a small man promises you his ridiculously big heart? You still your hands in his hair and you hum-sigh _I_ _hear_ _you,_ and when you feel his mouth moving at your hipbone and then at your cock you open up your legs.

Then you laugh and jerk away because the tiny damn creature just _bit_ _your_ _dick,_ "John!"

It had devolved from there into rigid fingers digging into ribs, knees nearly side-swiping cocks, and eventually each of them taking turns hovering over the other and giving his lover a slow, sexy hand-job because they both wanted to stay still and watch each other's face transform.

Afterward John's lyricism was gone, replaced by something a lot more earthy.

"The smell of you, the absolute _smell_ of you Sherlock," he growled. "I don't know what your body does, what pheromones you make, but when you want sex, when you've had sex, when you've come…well your breath, the smell on your skin, between your legs—it's like…I want to say a drug but no, it's…it makes me want to just stay near you, breathe you, make you come again. It's a feedback loop, you smell of sex and so I want us to have sex, which makes you smell of sex, which…"

John shut himself up then by wiggling down, swiping a tongue high up on Sherlock's belly. "Hmmmm. Can I love you but not be crazy about the consistency of cold semen?"

Sherlock tugged John up—slicking the doctor's belly through that cold come—stuck his nose in John's hair just back of the doctor's ear.

"You always smell _this_ way, exactly this way—before sex, after sex, during sex."

John didn't ask _what_ _way_ _is_ _that,_ instead he waited.

"It's clean. Salty. Warm. Of cotton and tea." Sherlock closed his eyes, wriggled so that their sticky stomachs sort of slicked around on one another. "Sometimes you smell of soap. Or a sandwich. Or stroppy."

John could not let that one go. "Stroppy does not have a smell."

Did John know that every time Sherlock sort of undulated his hips up, John kind of pressed his down?

"Stroppy smells like the fire extinguisher. And tannic, like cold tea that still has the teabag in it. It smells of distance and it smells blue."

It's not going to be a _very_ common thing at 221B, two erections so soon revisiting the scene of their recent crimes. Usually there will be a longer wait, or just sleep after sex, but right now they've been together a little over three days and god damn it they were so hot for each other that frequent fucking seemed about the only way to put the blaze out. So as Sherlock thrust up, John humped down until pretty soon they were both hard again.

"Blue. _Blue?"_

Sherlock shrugged. "I think blue smells like your eyes."

John blinked down at Sherlock, Sherlock blinked up at John. "If ever I wake up to you smelling or tasting my eyes, love, I'm going to…to…"

Sherlock pushed a knee between his sweetheart's thighs so that John could more properly get a good rut going. The good doctor never did finish that sentence.

It took them both a little time to finish what they'd restarted. But then again that was the whole point.

* * *

Somewhere in night-remembering, in his cold room, Sherlock fell asleep. And somewhere in sleep he dreamed.

Afterward, when he opened his eyes to the dark, he ran long fingers softly along his temples, but there were no tear tracks running to his hair. There was just the feeling of crying, low in his belly, high in the throat.

And oh god such loneliness.

For the tick of ten heartbeats it was everywhere, in the room, his brain, filling his mouth and lungs and…and then…

_Three days, two hours, eight minutes._

And then three days, two hours, and eight minutes after he'd become John Watson's lover Sherlock realized that for however long this lasted— _forever_ _dear_ _god_ _please_ _dear_ _god_ _please_ —he didn't have to be alone in the dark.

John said that he would come. That he would hear. That he would soothe.

Sherlock's not a super-genius for nothing. He can extrapolate like no one's business and right then the deductive wonder sat up in his chilly bed and he _extrapolated._

If John would come, if he would hear, if he would soothe…Well then he would let _Sherlock_ come, let him ask…and let him need.

Not quite a minute later the small man verified the veracity of this hypothesis when Sherlock's long warm body crawled into John's soft warm bed.

"Wondered where you'd gone." John sighed, sleepy. "Hold on t'me? Think I had a bad…dream."

And then John slept while Sherlock wrapped the little man in long arms and John wrapped himself tight round Sherlock's heart, and one of them dozed dreamless, and the other not for awhile yet, but it was okay to be awake in the dark now.

It was really just fine.

_Written for Livia Carica, who is the source from which all spontaneous stories arise god damn it. Her prompt was "Sherlock crawls into John's bed for comfort, and John lets him," and this was my reply._


	6. ...Sherlock Prepared to Go Deaf

John's not a fan of cooking. He loves eating, but getting the meal together has never been a passion. He _does_ it, of course, because he's frugal and it's expedient.

What John also does is hum. While he cooks. Sometimes. The tunes are varied and often unified by their tunelessness. He also talks to the food as he prepares it. Sometimes. "Cut damn you, don't _mash,_ I don't want _mashed_ tomatoes, I want _sliced_ tomatoes." He also tries to whistle as he sautés, stirs, or steeps. Sometimes. Since John can't really whistle this always sounds a bit like the early stages of an asthma attack.

Today John was making black beans and rice and that apparently called for a bit of not-whistling and some humming while cans were opened and veggies chopped.

It also called for Sherlock to stand just outside the kitchen and out of sight, eyes closed, head cocked, the long fingers of one hand plucking the air, while his brain made a memory.

Sherlock remembers differently that the rest of us. Instead of making memories by unifying moments into a gestalt, he takes the sum and breaks it into parts. So briefly the whistle, the hum, the tomatoes stood alone, each a single clear note. Once Sherlock knew one note he moved to the next, and the next, until finally he knew them all. That was when they became a song.

A memory.

* * *

The men and women in Sherlock's family tend to be tall and of above-average intelligence. The women often have ginger hair, dominant personalities, and big feet. The men tend toward high cheekbones, scrawny beards, and early-onset deafness.

While Sherlock inherited the height, the brains, some of the ginger, a good bit of the dominance, the beard, and the cheekbones, it's by no means a foregone conclusion that he too will lose his hearing in his late 50s or early 60s.

It is something he worries about, however, if by worry you mean now and again thinking he should begin cataloging the sounds of which he's most fond—just in case.

So Sherlock started doing just that this weekend by picking a fight.

"What was that John?"

"I _said_ you're an idiot."

Well, not a fight exactly, but he said something inflammatory while they got dressed because he wanted to hear John swear at him. He likes the swearing. He wants to record it, remember it.

"John, I know you're way down there somewhere, but you're mumbling and I can't hear you."

John scowled and bulled his way right into Sherlock's personal space.

"You're a big god damned git, and you're fucking annoying, and you're a bloody idiot. Do you hear me now?"

Sherlock tilted his head, closed his eyes and, fingers plucking the air a little, he teased out notes, played them, played them again, then once more for luck. After a few moments he smiled, kissed the top of John's head and said, "You're right on all counts and yes I do. Chinese?"

At this point in their relationship John is almost unshockable. He nodded curtly, kissed Sherlock's neck, and snapped, "Cajun. And I'm cooking," before marching from the room.

* * *

The violin came next. Playing a few of his favorite concertos one right after the other, Sherlock began committing to memory not the songs, but the way they sounded scraping at the ceiling of the flat, the way they flattened when he tilted his head into the instrument, or how they seemed to go all crystal and sharp when John smiled at the music.

Frankly Sherlock expected to devote much time to cataloging the violin, but once John wandered from the sitting room and into the kitchen to prepare dinner, Sherlock realized he didn't care so much about this particular noise. So he pursued instead the one he did.

Standing just the other side of the kitchen doorway, head cocked, eyes closed, fingers playing over currents in the air, Sherlock listened to John hum and sing. He listened to him berate the tomatoes and open cans of beans, and he listened to John swear when he cut himself.

After fetching a plaster and patching up his sweetheart, Sherlock sat in the kitchen and listened to a bit more swearing, more one-sided discussions with the food, and John's thoughts on the second of the three concertos Sherlock had played, airfare (he had a sudden urge to go to Australia), and shampoo.

After dinner Sherlock suggested they watch Top Gear because the program always made John talk to the television and when John talked to the telly he got this high-pitched silly tone Sherlock heard him use nowhere else.

* * *

"I want to hear you."

Afterward they had sex.

John nuzzled his lover's neck, his soft-spoken reply raising goosebumps along Sherlock's throat. "That's your department."

Sherlock weaved his legs around John's. "Well now it's my turn to hear instead of be heard. Make noise for me."

John's not a Holmes but he is bright. So he let his lover's long legs wrap around his and drag him close, and sliding a hand down to his own cock he groaned, a little breathless, said, "Why my love?"

 _That._ Those sounds. Those endearments.

So Sherlock told him. Detailing what he'd already done. What he hoped to do. How he would do it. And John got it. Of course he did. Who wouldn't?

As Sherlock explained, John stilled. But Sherlock reached between them, moved the good doctor's hand for him, murmured, "Don't stop." And so John didn't stop, and Sherlock elucidated, and while John wanted to tell him there was no guarantee he would lose his hearing he knew Sherlock knew the odds. He also knew Sherlock was doing perhaps the only sensible thing he _could_ do: He was getting ready.

"I'll help," John whispered. "Now. Later. Anytime you tell me to."

Sherlock grinned. He tilted his head. He closed his eyes. He weaved his fingers with John's. And he said softly, so softly it was difficult to make out the words.

"Let me hear you."

So John did.


	7. ...Greg Lestrade Met Mycroft Holmes

If he'd been at work Greg wouldn't have even looked.

Well, that's a lie. Greg would have looked. He definitely would have looked.

 _Tall_ _drink_ _of_ _water._ It's a trite old phrase but it's what the DI would have thought, it's what he _did_ think the first time he saw Mycroft Holmes. He'd have thought _His hair is different, his posture too, his eyes, nose, mouth…nearly everything's different. He's nothing at all like his brother and yet I knew who he was the second I saw him._

Yeah, so, Greg would have noticed Mycroft if he'd first met him at the Yard, of course he would have, but the phones (the god damn phones, he hates them), the tipping stack of case folders (crap was always falling out, he hates those folders), the incipient migraine he's always got (pretty soon Sherlock will figure that one out, stupid fluorescent lights flickering)…

 _Anyway._ The point, and he has one here somewhere beneath the empty coffee cups and his creased suit jacket and the blizzard of notes for the last case…the point is that he didn't meet Mycroft at the Met and for that Greg is grateful because he wouldn't have had _time._

Time to look. Time to really look and to see.

Because Greg sees, of course he does. He's not Mycroft, no. And he's not Sherlock, thank god. He's himself, a forty-something detective inspector who can see in a flash the almost painful rigidity in a man's spine, hear the words that don't come from that straight-lipped mouth, detect the real meaning behind the words that do.

He sees the way that man looks at his brother, with the barest flicker of a frown when the erratic man says something erratic, and then a nearly invisible smile when John Watson calls him on it.

And, of course, let's be honest, Greg sees something not many others have bothered to see. He sees a man with a dusting of faint freckles across his brow (yeah, Greg knows Mycroft covers them up with a touch of foundation; the Holmes boys are not, shall we say, precisely _regular_ boys), broad shoulders, a tendency to talk to you through his _lashes_ for Christ's sake, and that voice, that _voice,_ like velvet, velve—

Yes. Well. Anyway. Greg didn't meet Mycroft at the Yard, he met him at 221B after a case was closed and it was for just five minutes—that's what Mycroft said (well what he actually said was "my driver is waiting Sherlock, must dash" as if his driver wasn't paid to wait patiently for her employer until Judgment Day), but five minutes turned into ten which ended up being forty-three ("My, I really _must_ dash now, it's been forty-three minutes. So lovely to meet you Mr. Lestrade"), and at the end Greg went home smiling even though he'd actually spoken to Mycroft barely at all but still—

Look, sheesh, the point we're trying to make here is that the first time Greg met Mycroft they noticed each other, yes, they took the time to notice each other. And though it's been years since then, Greg remembers thinking at the time what he thinks to this day.

"You. So very much… _you."_

_Wayoming wanted to know about the first time Greg met Mycroft. This is how it went from where I was standing. Of course your version may differ…_


	8. ...Sherlock Sort of Abandoned a Corpse

There was a fresh body on the stainless steel table and an alibi on the line. Sherlock did not want the distraction. He did not need the distraction. He did not have bloody _time_ for the distraction.

John did it anyway.

And what John _did_ was take one consulting detective, hunched for the last five hours over a frustrating experiment on a quickly-decaying corpse, drag him away from the bench, shove him into one of St. Bart's many supply cupboards, block the door with buckets and industrial-sized boxes of soap powder, and then he tugged Sherlock's trousers to his ankles, turned him around so fast the cranky detective had to throw both arms up against the wall and then, a few seconds later, John slid two lubed and latex-gloved fingers into his lover's arse.

"If you give your brain a break..." said the good doctor, standing on tip-toe to whisper in Sherlock's ear, "...it works much better."

Sherlock pressed his forehead to the wall and grunted. John rocked his own small body back and forth against his sweetheart, those two fingers pushing in deep with each sway.

"You can think faster if you do," said John, "yes, even you."

Sherlock concentrated on one part of his body, and it was definitely not his brain. He grunted again. Meanwhile John enjoyed the quite pleasant sensation of sort of humping Sherlock's hip.

"Now I know this experiment has to be completed tonight, but I want a promise from you. No matter how long it takes, you'll stop every few hours for a little, um...break. With me."

_Yes, yes, yes, just curl your fingers, just a little, please._

Someday, Sherlock's convinced, if he concentrates hard enough, John's going to be able to read his mind. Since his lover's fingers remained uncurled, that day was clearly not today. So Sherlock answered in the only way of which he was currently capable, with an affirmative grunt. John answered with a curl of his fingers, a fist on a cock, and a deep push.

* * *

Molly did not mean to eavesdrop (yes she did).

Molly did not mean to carefully add three dimensional color images in mind's eye to go with the soundtrack currently playing behind a closed cupboard door (yes she did).

When Sherlock came—his voice guttural, raw, and _loud_ —Molly didn't mean to bite her lip so hard it was swollen for the next hour (well that's true).

And most of all Molly certainly didn't mean to sort of drift on over to the bench and mess up Sherlock's experiment just enough that it would take him twice as long to complete (yes she sure did).

And finally, Molly? She did not mean to do these things several times. As in repeatedly. Throughout that long, very long night.

Oh yes, she damn well did.

_Imagining this totally derailed my brain and it took twice as long as normal to regain language skills as it usually does. Not sure why…_


	9. ...The Boys Were Well-Seasoned

No one knows this, but sometimes the boys do it just for the sweat.

Because honestly, the number of times John and Sherlock need to run after thieves and reprobates? It's really rather small.

Call it four times a year. Five. Maybe six or seven, but if it's ever even close to eight, nine or ten it's because John and Sherlock _like_ the running and the yelling and the 'stop, thief!' thing, even if they don't technically have to themselves _stop the thief._

So yes, though they do on occasion need to bring an evil doer to heel, and though a dramatic dash down dark streets can get them to a crime scene more quickly, John and Sherlock usually run for another reason entirely.

They do it because it makes them sweat. And when they sweat…things happen.

Later, of course. After the chasing and catching. After the going to and coming from. It's later, at home, when they've stripped off everything and purposely not showered, when they've wrapped themselves in a cocoon of blankets and curled toward one another on the bed. That's when it starts, when fingers tangle in hair, toes wriggle, and a tongue wets lips again and again.

Surprisingly it was Sherlock who started it, the tasting. But then that sort of makes sense, this man with so little interest in most food? Of _course_ he'd be sensitive to seasoning, especially to salt.

That first time he did it the night had been long. They'd fallen into bed weary and sweaty, and while John had begun dozing almost instantly, Sherlock was too wound up, couldn't sleep. So he slid beneath the blankets to block out noise and light and maybe get himself drowsy with a little carbon dioxide exposure (you know he'd do that, right?), and because he was still _on_ he noticed John…had a smell.

John is a rare creature in many ways. He can swear with creative fury, but can't whistle worth a damn. He can cause strangers to salute employing four words and a chin-lifted glare, but is unable to flag down a taxi five times in ten. And he can keep up with Sherlock through most of a long and energetic run, but he barely sweats and he certainly never smells bad when he does.

Sherlock pulled the covers higher over his head, squirmed his bare body lower, breathed deep. So no, John didn't smell bad. He smelled like…Sherlock pressed his nose between his sweetheart's shoulder blades…John smelled like…Sherlock opened his mouth and took another breath…John smelled like…the detective licked meditatively along his lover's spine, bumps and hollows giving up the same marvelous flavor.

"You are briny, John Watson, and you smell of the sea."

John made a hurumphing sort of noise and splashed a dozy smile into the dark.

Nothing more was said for awhile and maybe they both slept—one with chin tucked to chest, street light limning his face blue, the other deep and warm under cover—but Sherlock's usually tractable tongue…now it was _interested._

So while the lanky detective was at last drifting off, his limbic system was quietly turning on. It was slicking that tongue round his mouth, coaxing from it the complexity of John's perspiration. There was a faint, almost metal tang, a touch of minerals, and the vaguest flavor of something sweet. And of course, at the fore, nearly overwhelming everything, there was the cravable, savory sense of salt.

Sherlock's tongue wanted more, and so the good detective woke himself from a light sleep already nosing at John's back. Even before he opened his eyes under those heavy, light-blocking blankets, his tongue was already out and seeking.

After the third lick—each one wriggling him lower, until he was at the small of John's back—John sighed himself awake.

There's something soothing about being stroked; it can relax all your muscles, leaving you weak and boneless and sleepy. At the same time it can flush your skin with blood, trip your heartbeat higher, cause you to slide a lazy hand between your thighs.

When John woke to the stroke of Sherlock's tongue, when he parted his legs just a little to make room for the push of his fingers, the dark and piquant world under those covers got _delicious._

"I smell you," sighed Sherlock, hand drifting up to hold John's hip. "I can _smell_ you."

John sighed right back, his hand slow, his eyes still closed, and he whispered, "Tell me."

Sherlock is a rare creature in many ways. He has at his disposal many words, so many ways of elucidating. He rarely chooses the lyrical, however, he hardly ever even chooses the _clear,_ but with John, at moments like this, oh then Sherlock's devoutly both.

"You smell like the sitting room in winter."

John will often build fires in the fireplace during the worst of the cold, and most times Sherlock will camp out in front of them and read through case notes, grim periodicals, or the latest lurid fiction ("It's for a ca—" "I know Sherlock."). More times than not he'll also 'tend' the flames. His version of ministering usually results in conflagration, but the point is…the sitting room in winter smells of warmth and comfort, of a brain blessedly at idle and briefly happy to be there. It smells of contentment. Of his life now, with this man.

John chuckled low in his chest, ran fingers lazily down the length of his own erection, and murmured, "Mmm hmmm?"

"You taste…"

Sherlock slid his other hand between mattress and John's hip, gripped firmly and pushed his lover higher up along the bed. That almost indolent show of strength there in the dark pulled a long, low moan from John.

Still curled on their sides, John now closer to the bed head, Sherlock still nested deep beneath blankets, both men took a deep breath. Then Sherlock's tongue, now a good ten inches below the small of his sweetheart's back, swiped very lightly over the seam of John's arse.

"…oh god you taste of Christmas."

Both men got a short fit of the giggles right about then, John's loud and high-pitched, Sherlock's wry and a little bit amazed.

Amazed because the good detective will tell you he doesn't like Christmas, or Easter, or Halloween (no, not even Halloween), but he _does,_ clearly he does, because right now John tasted spicy, peppery, tangy, _perfect,_ and the first thing Sherlock's big brain thought of when he licked away the lingering sweat—which is just trace amounts of chlorides, sugars, ammonia, and urea for heaven's sake—was of seasonal dinners that he eats and eats because John brings him a plate, then another, then dessert.

"John…" Sherlock moaned, his hand sliding down the side of John's thigh and back up again, his tongue seeking in the dark and finding once more the groove of John's arse, where he again lapped lightly, a faint and tantalizing pressure, the barest tease.

That was all they did, the both of them for awhile. John masturbated silently, sometimes pausing, waiting, holding his breath, until he felt the delicate swipe of Sherlock's tongue again, sometimes at the crease, sometimes at the cheeks of his bum, each stroke light and careful and warm.

And lyrical, let's not forget that part.

"Zinc and chromium, copper and iron. I must be tasting the metals in that spine of yours," said the man who rarely romanced like other men. John arched his back, pressed the meat of that fine arse against Sherlock's mouth. John's lover responded by biting. "Mmmm…magnesium and potassium and calcium. But why does the taste of you make me think of sweet things, of sugar and honey and tea?"

Sherlock lapped at the bump of John's coccyx, gripped and parted his lover's arse with both hands, let his thumbs slip-slide gently down, probe between, then softly _push._ He bit the tiny bone at the end of his lover's spine and Sherlock _breathed._

John stuttered a guttural moan and started to come and Sherlock closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and he quite nearly hyperventilated under those damn covers, breathing, breathing, and breathing in the scent of John as he came, of his John, of running in the night, of not being alone, of hearing and being heard, of sex and fucking and rutting and laughing. He breathed and he breathed and maybe he'd have never come out from that perfect sanctuary under those sheets and blankets, it was warm and safe and quiet and he did not need to think, he did not _want_ to think, he wanted only what he had: Home and comfort and John, always John.

John, John, John. Who, as it happened, now wanted something that _he_ had: He wanted Sherlock.

His post-orgasm words were really just grunts and gestures, they were bites and nips at fingers and wrist, they were a small man wiggling low and shifting them both until he was straddling his lover under a winter pile of blankets.

And—hallelujah!—he'd brought lube.

Reaching between them John slicked Sherlock up, short fingers lingering a long time over his lover's fine erection, until the good doctor thought he'd get his sweetie off with a lazy little hand job. With an eager cant of hips, with humming moans of approval, Sherlock seemed quite on board with this but no, John decided he wanted more, and so they adjusted, pulled, pushed until—

_"Ooooooooh…"_

—until every inch of Sherlock's cock was inside John.

And then, as John started to ride slow, he pressed his face to Sherlock's neck, and he licked.

"Why…" he sighed, breathless, "why do you…taste of…of…flame?"

Sherlock turned his head, baring more neck.

"Not …fire, not smoke…" John paused a moment, the better to feel the gooseflesh washing like a hot wind over his skin. And then he started moving again with a grunt as Sherlock pushed in hard and deep. "…but flame." John licked lavish stripes along Sherlock's throat, then up into his lover's hair, until he was actually lapping at the tangled mass of it.

"Metal, yes…salty, sweaty, iron and copper and the night, you—" John couldn't speak for a full minute as Sherlock panted fast, pumped his hips hard, flesh smacking softly, deliciously against flesh. "—oh fuck me, that's perfect."

Sherlock grunted prettily, two times or twenty, John was possibly going a bit deaf with the pleasure and so couldn't say.

After Sherlock took it down a notch—John can count on one hand, maybe on _half_ of one hand, the number of times Sherlock's just hurried on through and went hell-for-leather toward his own orgasm—and John could form words again, he did just that.

"…what was I…oh yes…" Grunt. "…you taste…of flame…and…" John curved his back; the angle of Sherlock's cock changed and John's goosebumps were now dewy with a thin layer of sweat-musk-need. The good doctor keened softly and Sherlock responded by shoving his cock into John so hard he lifted his hips clean off the bed.

Both of them lost track of pretty much everything for awhile.

And then Sherlock _slowed everything down again_ and not for the first time John reflected that he will possibly have a heart attack in bed one of these days. Hopefully when they're both in their 90s maybe, and hopefully not a fatal one, but he's pretty sure that years of taking a dick _this slowly_ up the arse is going to do his poor heart in down the line because seriously, who can handle that much divine stress and not eventually, you know, just say, "Fuck it, I give up?"

Um, anyway.

John pressed his forehead to Sherlock's forehead, then sucked on Sherlock's eyebrow because, well, it was right there.

"God…you'll…kill…me," he grunted between his lover's languid thrusts. He sucked again at that bushy brow, then let his tongue swipe at the faint hollow of his sweetheart's temple. "You…taste…like my arms." John panted in frustration. "No…of your arms round me. Close. You taste…" Sherlock stopped moving, the better to hear. "…you taste like warmth and dark and your heartbeat up against mine." John giggled randomly and squirmed on the hard-on on which he had so deliciously impaled himself. The feel of it shifting pulled another lusty groan from somewhere throaty and deep.

John muttered against the damp and the salt of Sherlock's pale neck, "I don't really know what you smell like, what you taste like, I just know I want it," John rose up, blankets fell away. "I want it." He sat tall, felt Sherlock sink all the way in again. "Oh g-good god I want it."

And without even the tiniest additional movement, the faintest thrust, Sherlock started to come.

In the faint light John watched, devouring, consuming, hungry for the sight—the bared teeth, the open mouth slack with pleasure and at the same time taut with the intensity of that pleasure, the curve of the long neck, the dark snarl of curls plastered to the pale sheets, and the eyes, those light eyes that struggled to stay open but which closed tight as the orgasm took him.

John shoved his face into Sherlock's neck and as he grunted and pushed and filled John's body, Sherlock filled John's nose and his mouth and his eyes, yeah, especially his eyes, with one simple, complex, perfect, wonderful life-giving thing: salt.

Just…salt.

_In my series "A Little Birdie Told Me…", in the story[Salt, Fire, Babies & Evil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/727851/chapters/1351220), I mention that the boys have a predilection of savoring the taste of one another. I wanted to know when that proclivity first started. Apparently this…this was when._


	10. …Sherlock Set His Privates on Fire

You've heard hints about this, you know you have. For god's sake, John brings it up every single chance he gets.

With Lestrade, discussing exactly what accelerant an arsonist has used, John'll suddenly pipe up with: "Did I ever tell you about the time Sherlock set his dick on fire?"

At a party where people are talking about scented candles for heaven's sake, John'll wander past, and say, "Want to hear about how my husband set his crotch aflame?"

With Mrs. Hudson, after she puts another log on an already-crackling blaze, "So you've heard about that time Sherlock burned his privates, right?"

Say the words fire, flame, inferno, burn, candle or dick (apparently) and begin counting. Before you get to three John Watson'll be halfway across the room, regaling you.

Yet just in case you've _not_ been present for any of the numerous tellings of this oft-told tale, I, Rory, the skull on the mantle at 221B, have it here recorded for posterity.

You're welcome.

* * *

The day _It_ happened began brightly, brightly and with beauty, if by beauty you mean two forces of nature bumping up against one another in the early morning light only to discover they each had morning wood.

While no one was actually nonsensical enough to say _timber,_ they both kind of _thought_ it, and so the smaller man decided to go about chopping down the taller man's, uh, tree with the most logical tool at hand—his hand.

"Oh…oh…mmm," said Sherlock, sighing sleepily, arching prettily. Indolent and nearly purring in soft morning light, he kept up that nonsensical commentary as his sweetie slowly stroked. "Hmmm…" he said in lazy appreciation, and then "ooooo." Finally, a little later there was, "Oh…" and then slightly more urgent "Uh…uh…uh…" and then finally an "Aaaaaaaaah!" That last little bit accompanied with exclamatory ejaculate as a once proudly erect, um, tree fell.

After a brief cat-nap—call it two minutes—the taller man did a sleepy-stretchy thing and nuzzled his sweetie's shoulder. A very lazy lumberjack, Sherlock just kept bumping John with his head until the good doctor got the message and straddled that cranium, closing his eyes as Sherlock's warm hands slid up along his back and pulled him close, until John felt his cock (tree, wood, whatever) bumping against the back of his lover's throat.

Soft as wind whispering through leaves the good doctor sighed. A moment later Sherlock contentedly echoed him, and so John sighed again, longer, higher. Awhile later came the echo, and so it went awhile, John calling, Sherlock responding, until eventually John more-or-less yelled timber and came with growly satisfaction in his sweetheart's mouth.

After another cat-nap, a discreetly applied bite mark ("John, you do realize I realize that you're _marking_ your territory, right?") and a hearty breakfast ("Finish those eggs mister or I'll bite the other cheek,") John left to do legwork for their new case and that's when the things that led to genital-singeing conflagration began.

When they took the case—John eventually named it _Slash…and Burn_ much to Sherlock's eye-rolling ennui—Problem Child thought it would be clear-cut. Do a little catwalk strut modeling men's lingerie for a dozen or so very rich women, notice which responded to a mole he'd strategically place in a location that would mean something only to the embezzler, and bob's-your-uncle-in-frilly-knickers, case closed.

Yes, well Sherlock hadn't taken into account so very many things, of which singed genital hair was just the last straw. Or hair. Whatever.

The problems started weeks before when the good detective went for his second lingerie fitting, this time with John in tow.

What should have been an easy two hour visit to that discreet tailor turned into a sweaty four hour rut fest because Sherlock kept getting hard watching John watch him slip on scanty panties, sheer stockings, garter belts, and corsets. They'd had to retire to the gentlemen's lounge twice just to simmer the hell on down enough for Sherlock to actually finish the fittings.

Then there was the thing with the shaved legs. Sherlock did that at home while John was out, taking his sweet meticulous time to do it right. Later that afternoon John caught his lover tugging up his trouser leg to pet his own calf, learned why, then they both discovered John has a _huge_ cock-hardening kink for Sherlock with smooth-shaved legs.

Then there was the thing with the placing of the mole and a whole long discussion about who Sherlock thought should be allowed to touch that mole if the case called for it, and John completely listening and nodding and then discussing the merits of _no one at all touching it, okay, no one, all right mister?_

So yes, by the time it was Tuesday—catwalk day—the case had already taken Sherlock right through the ringer, so forgive him if he was a little hesitant to bring John into the proceedings when he realized that he was going to have to, you know, tidy up the fleecy flora between his own lean thighs. Or, more simply put, Sherlock needed to shave his crotch.

The thing is, Sherlock has broken every single electric razor they've ever had, using them for purposes for which they were never intended (trying to peel a watermelon by shaving it is just one of the many, many ways to break an electric razor), so John simply stopped buying electric razors. They now share an 'ultra' 'unobtanium' 'manly' three-blade manual job and the fact that it needs new blades regularly is lost on Sherlock because John's hidden those, convinced that if Sherlock knew where the naked blades were, they too would be used for purposes neither natural nor sane.

_Anyway._

The point is, when he tried to use it, Sherlock discovered that the only razor in the house was desperately dull. It had shaved both their faces four times in the last four days, it had shaved Sherlock's legs twice a day for those four days (John really, _really_ liked the bare-naked thing), it had even shaved John's legs twice (Sherlock liked it, but just a bit less). By the time Sherlock needed that razor to denude parts of his wild privates, the thing was unable to gum much less bite, so to speak.

That's when boy genius, the idiot with whom I live, Problem Child, got his first bright idea.

* * *

"FUCK!"

Silence.

"GOD DAMN IT!"

Silence.

"STOP IT!"

Sweat leaking down his back, woozy from blood loss to the brain, trembling all over, Sherlock threw the tweezers onto the loo floor and backed away from them.

He was glad John wasn't home and hadn't heard his swearing. He was glad John wasn't home to see how quickly Sherlock—who thought he sort of _liked_ pain—rebelled at the agony of plucking his genital hair with that evil little torture device. He was especially glad John wasn't home because Sherlock's pretty sure John would yell at him for flushing those awful, awful things down the toilet.

After Sherlock unclogged the toilet and mopped up the last of the overflow with seven towels and his trousers, he checked his watch. He still had three hours until show time, it was good, it was all good. He was ready other than needing a quick clip of—

Clip. Clipping. _Clippers._

Sherlock started digging through bathroom drawers. They were here, they were—

_Bingo._

Nail clippers. Perfect.

Sherlock sat down on the lid of the toilet, spread those long legs, and bent over his work. Twenty minutes later he was about to stab himself in the neck with the clipper's little file.

A man ill-suited to boredom will not readily find it soothing to snip away at his own genitals _single hair_ by _single hair._ Most especially he will not find it soothing when he gets impatient, tries to snip several hairs at once, and ends up sweating and woozy again because he's _bleeding_ in a place where he does not ever wish to see blood and—

Unlike the tweezers, the nail clippers did not cause the toilet to over-flow.

All right, it was two and one half hours until he had to walk the walk, he had time. Time to trim, time to—

_Ah ha!_

Thirty minutes later Sherlock could tell you that every last steak knife in their kitchen is as dull as the razor but only the serrated edges. The tips of at least two of those knives are really quite keen. Fortunately the puncture wounds were small and stopped bleeding quickly.

Sherlock checked his watch. It was less than two hours until he needed to don high-cut knickers with pretty lace, less than two hours before he stood all leggy and crotch-forward in front of an embezzler and waited for her to see what only she would see. He had less than two hours; he didn't have time to mess around any more.

So Sherlock reached for the one tool he thinks he understands. He reached for fire.

* * *

Fortunately only the toilet roll burned. All other flammable items were either not present or in no condition to catch fire.

The towels were soaking from having mopped up overflow, the flannel was damp from having staunched clipper-caused bleeding, and John's ratty green dressing gown was on the bed because Sherlock may or may not have been cuddling it earlier to calm down from the whole _tweezing_ debacle.

So yes, only one _small_ thing caught fire in that toilet. The _big, stupid_ thing that caught fire, of course, was Sherlock.

It all happened so quickly that even the keen detective couldn't keep track really.

"Tell me again please."

An hour later Sherlock was sitting on the sofa, a bag of frozen peas propped against his privates, and John was sitting on the coffee table and saying literally for the tenth time, "Because I keep thinking you said that you tried to burn your genital hair. The hair. That's yours. That's on _you."_

Sherlock didn't have to pretend he couldn't hear John, what with the palms he had pressed flat against his ears.

John plucked one of Sherlock's hands off of one of Sherlock's ears. "Help me here love. Explain the process. Because I'm seriously debating taking you in for psychiatric care."

Ordinarily Sherlock would take this opportunity to squinch his face into a moue of disgust and dramatically assume the fetal position on the sofa, but the very idea of curling into a little ball of petulance made him break out in a cold sweat beneath his cold compress.

Instead he spoke dramatically, gesturing theatrically with the hand John still held. "The razor blade was dull John. When I tried to use it I _cut_ myself. In a very delicate area. There was blood."

Chin lifted, Sherlock looked west, as if to a far and distant shore, one where lovers did not chide wounded men who may or may not have nicked their delicate privates trying to denude their genitals with an unsharp shaving implement. And then set fire to them.

"Right, I know, I get that part, the part where you lost your mind and thought fire was a suitable depilatory. No, I just don't understand how the toilet roll burned, why the tub is full of wet towels, how come the toilet's making an ominous gurgling sound, and why you're actually still alive. That's all, that's just the few things I don't get."

Sherlock adjusted his peas. He sniffed with the sorrow of the chronically misunderstood.

John gave this fresh bout of consulting detective melodramatics the moment of admiring silence they deserved and then said softly, "Did you even think to use scissors? We have at least three pair."

Sherlock continued to look fixedly toward his far-flung shore and only the tiniest flicker at the corner of one eye betrayed his brief thought: _Oh._

"May I look at your wounds my precious pet?"

Sherlock flicked his gaze away from the unnamed remote shore and looked at John perched on the coffee table. He did not answer his lover's entreaty for he felt the need for additional coaxing and pampering in the form of endearments and possibly praise.

"Come my darling creature, spread those pretty legs for me. I'm your doctor, I need to be sure you're all right."

Sherlock glanced at his watch. They had 88 minutes until show time. The Cumberland Hotel was less than one mile from where they now sat. Slouched. From where one of them now sat and the other slouched.

John looked at Mr. Petulance, who looked back at him. Both knew that they could crawl over to the hotel on hands and knees and make it on time.

"Let me see sweetheart, let me heal."

Sherlock placed his peas carefully upon the side table and murmured, "I have never ignored the advice of my physician—"

John did not call him on this dramatic falsehood.

"—nor denied him access to my body. Please, sir, if you'd be so kind."

With that Sherlock slid his bum to the edge of the sofa, spread his dressing gown and his legs, and squinted grandly at that still far-flung shore.

John Watson wasn't expecting to see beneath those frozen veggies the thing he did see, though what could he _possibly_ have been expecting? Who _expects_ to have an expectation on what they'll see regarding scorched genitals?

John Watson, apparently.

But that's neither here nor that, because John didn't see what he expected, he saw something unbelievable beneath those peas: John saw a remarkably well-groomed crotch. Absolutely, positively, unbelievably it looked _good_ down there. Except for a slight inflammation and a rosy glow over the entire pubic area Sherlock had by some grand and impossible miracle succeeded in trimming a four-inch patch of delicate shrubbery with the equivalent of ten foot lopping sheers.

"Well fuck me twice and call the paramedics darling, this looks marvelous." (John is sometimes earthily dramatic. Like a lumberjack.)

After a few more moments administering praise, Dr. Watson proceeded to apply burn lotion (they buy it by the litre bottle) to Sherlock's private place. Carefully and thoroughly. Over the course of such treatment Sherlock ceased gazing at his far-flung shore and started maybe shoving his private place closer and closer to his, uh, doctor's private place.

By the time Sherlock had his hips hanging clean off the couch and his legs spread as wide as they would go, both men glanced at their watches. They had 67 minutes. Almost. Pretty much. They immediately proceeded to use 37 of them to great, groaning effect.

* * *

Yes, well, so.

They made it to the venue on time and ultimately the case went well. They had cuffs on the embezzler by the end of the show.

John never did find out how the toilet roll caught fire though he did figure out what was causing the sinister sound in the toilet. As Sherlock predicted (after they paid a plumber £135 to come out on a Friday night) John yelled at him for flushing things down the loo.

But ultimately the good doctor got a damned good story out of all of it and later Mrs. Hudson said perhaps the best thing anyone's ever said about Sherlock, ever. "Oh dear. Sherlock Holmes, I believe you could set _fire_ on fire."

 _Thank you Ununpentium for the immortal words: "Sherlock could set_ fire _on fire." They were the inspiration that finally got me to write down just how Sherlock once set his genital hair aflame, something I've alluded to several times in several stories. Because everyone needed to know about this. Of course they did._


	11. ...Sherlock Asks Instead of Deducing

Sherlock knows John knows he can see him doing it.

And Sherlock really, _really_ wants to know why John's doing it.

Yet instead of asking, Sherlock looks at the telly, at John, and then Sherlock does what Sherlock does: He deduces.

_Forty-something. Gangly. Thin. Scruffy. A twit. Not remotely in the neighborhood of the kind of man John likes._

Sherlock looks away from the telly, then quickly back again. Wait a minute. Wait one minute. Does John even _have_ a neighborhood as regards men? Sherlock lowers those great big brows. Presses his lips together. Steeples fingers. From the comforts of his chair (turned so he can pretend he's not watching telly) Sherlock stares at John as if he can see the squishy interior of the doctor's skull.

After a moment the detective's face smoothes. Of course John's got a neighborhood as regards men. _He_ is that neighborhood and has been for—

Sherlock glances at his watch.

—roughly eleven days, twelve hours, twenty minutes and the seconds don't matter. Knowing the seconds would be overscrupulous and Sherlock is—

_Forty-three seconds._

—not inclined to be quite _that_ dogmatic.

So yes, John's got a neighborhood as regards men and Sherlock's firmly in that neighborhood, not this gangly creature on the telly.

Sherlock glances at John again. And yet John's still doing it. Something he's seeing is causing him to—

Oh. Sherlock lowers his big brows, presses his lips together, glares at the telly.

The woman. She's what some might term…gorgeous. If you like blond. Lush-lipped. Wasp-waisted. But surely John wouldn't be interested in—

_She looks like that woman we saw at that place after that thing the other day._

Like some sort of fire-free dragon Sherlock huffs hot breath out his nose. Last week they'd been on a case in south London. They'd just emerged from an eccentric doctor's dimly-lit library, and John was delighted to "finally get away from the dust mites and dingy dark and—oh my god, Mary!"

John had rushed up to _her,_ a blond, slim, lush creature, a stranger. He'd _hugged_ her, then proceeded to talk with that woman on that street corner for _three_ minutes before introducing Sherlock. Of course the petulant detective had pretended to be deaf on general principle, then thought better of it and took John's hand, then thought better of that and took _both_ hands, then said something about "We'll be late dear," but John just kept talking to _Mary_ for another ten minutes and by the time _Mary_ left for a _thing_ John was chuckling and trying to whistle (he can't) and saying, "Oh stop scowling you big beautiful baby. Mary's just a friend."

John switched to humming instead of whistling, then switched to talking instead of humming. "What a life-saver she was in Afghanistan. Literally and figuratively. Best doctor I've ever known." If John had stopped talking there that would have been _perfect,_ but he didn't stop there and so it was _not._

"There's just this infectious joy to her. Didn't realize until just now how much I adored her, like some young boy crushing on a girl!" Then John _giggled_ and Sherlock scowled and pretended to be deaf for real this time.

Now, as then, Sherlock frowns. The woman on the TV really does look like _Mary_ and realizing this makes Sherlock feel light-headed. Maybe he swoons a little. He's never done it before so how can he tell? All Sherlock knows is that he doesn't approve of 'infectious' or 'crushes' or pretty much 'girls' for that matter.

_Is that why you're doing that, right there? Because of her?_

Sherlock's eleven days into his first and only romantic relationship, so in matters of the heart he's got little direct knowledge, but he's not going to let an insignificant lack of personal experience stop him from deduc—

_Good god, did John just moan?_

All right, this is too much. John's doing _that_ with his hand _there_ and he just made a small _sound_ and…and…there's a scrawny man and a skinny woman on television and the audience is laughing and even though the woman kind of looks like _Mary_ she doesn't _really_ and even if she did it wouldn't matter, Sherlock knows it wouldn't matter, John's not interested in anyone else because John stopped them on a street corner _after_ Mary and he told Sherlock that very thing and then he said _stop pretending you're deaf and kiss me, right now, where everyone can see_ , and so Sherlock had and—

_Another moan._

The consulting detective lodges his eyebrows clear up into his fringe, shocked that frustrated little sound has just come from _him._

"I didn't—" he begins in immediate, fibbing explanation, before quickly realizing John hasn't heard him.

The good doctor sighs and slides lower in his chair, spreads his legs a little. "Ask me."

Yes he had.

Sherlock looks away from John, the television, and maybe reality, because he pretends he doesn't hear his eleven-days-but-who's-counting paramour and—

"Ask me why," John whispers, watching the man who's pretending to not watch him.

Sherlock is currently thirty-four years old in some ways, sixteen in others, and in the last ten seconds he's learned something he didn't know about himself. He will always do things the hard way if it means he can be unique, better, _more._ And apparently he'll do things the hard way even if it just means it's…harder.

Sherlock decides that he's entirely too smart to be _quite_ that stupid.

"John," the smart, brilliant, amazing man says, "why are you doing _that_ while you watch _this?"_ The good detective gestures to the telly and the silly performers who've been rubbing lotion on one another while trying not to scratch their chicken pox and then finding all kinds of ways to scratch each _other_ for the last twenty-three minutes.

John finally stops palming his half-hard cock through jeans, though he indulgently slides a little deeper into his chair, indolently spreads his legs wider.

"I thought you'd never ask."

Ask. Ask. Ask. Eventually John won't have to ask Sherlock to ask, but eleven and a half days after becoming lovers with this smart, brilliant, amazing, _annoying, obtuse, stubborn_ man, John's still trying to teach his sweetheart to gain knowledge not only through deduction, but through the often much more expedient, much more delightful medium of _asking._

"Come here and ask again, love." John licks his lips in case Sherlock needs enticement.

Eleven days, twelve hours, twenty-three minutes and eighteen seconds into his first romantic relationship all the enticing Sherlock will ever need is John saying _now,_ or _yes,_ or _please,_ or just John looking at him with that look, that one right there, the one that makes Sherlock feel as if he's burning low in the belly and right between the legs.

He's a fast learner, is Sherlock, and more than ten days ago discovered that there was one way to make the fire _burn brighter._

He rises from his chair, the one turned so he can pretend he's not watching John watching the telly, and he stands between that flickering screen and his lover because he wants John to tell him to—

"Come here."

—and because he wants to make a _moment_ of that moment when he goes to his knees.

And to them he goes, amazed at how positively _fine_ that feels.

"Ask me," John says, breathing the words into still air, the sound getting lost in laugh track, but Sherlock can read lips pretty damn well and even if he couldn't John makes sure he feels them, lifting Sherlock's fingers to his mouth, whispering again before he softly bites.

"Why are you…biting me?" That isn't the question either of them expects, but it's a good one.

"Because I like the taste of your skin." John licks the tips of Sherlock's fingers one at a time, letting each drag down his lower lip before moving to the next. "You never taste the same way twice. Sometimes you're covered in chemicals. Or a haze of smoke. Or sweat from the last time."

John smiles, knowing exactly what the words "the last time" conjure in Sherlock's head. It's been unseasonably chilly for a London October, and last night, buried under the duvet, they went at it for so long that afterward John's hand came away from Sherlock's body actually _wet._

Pleased with John's unexpected response to his unexpected question, Sherlock ventures another. "Why did you kiss Mary?"

John doesn't see this one coming either, but answers just the same. "Because sometimes that's what friends do when they meet after an absence. It's especially likely if the people are of opposite sexes."

Sherlock, something of a stranger in this strange land of human affection, nods. "Like Mrs. Hudson."

One side of John's mouth quirks up. "Sure. Pretty much the same way you sometimes kiss Mrs. Hudson."

"Why," Sherlock begins again, and John knows now that there's a well-spring bubbling up in this man, that there is a thousand things he needs to know and this is just the start of his asking, "are you here?"

John can answer that question all kinds of ways, existential? Cosmic? Grand scheme? Instead he answers it the way Sherlock needs. "Because you make me happy."

Sometimes the simpler the answer the harder it is to grasp. Sherlock closes his eyes, the better to engage that big brain. He's still confused.

"Why?"

If he's not careful John'll pitch over into grand scheme, into cosmic, but he's a naturally grounded sort, so he plants himself firmly on Holmesian soil—weaving two fingers through Sherlock's—and says, "Because you're unbelievably brilliant and beautiful, because you're so alive and you're funny, because you're human and humane, and because even with all of that you picked me. You made me special because you picked me."

Sherlock wants the comfort of laying his head down on John's knees but he's eleven days, twelve hours, thirty-nine minutes and forty seconds into his first romantic relationship and there are some things Sherlock still can't admit to needing.

"Why," he says by way of self-diversion, "were you touching yourself?"

John's mouth quirks up. He tugs Sherlock's head down until it rests on his thigh then leans over and whispers. "It made me think of you doing that to me…but like this." John runs the nails of one hand hard up Sherlock's back.

Sherlock's breathes in deep. He's got a choice to make right about now. He can continue being the scientist, asking questions, observing, going deeper.

Or he can do the thing every scientist's trained to avoid. He can make himself part of the experiment.

Sherlock rises to his knees then slides his hands along John's thigh until he's firmly face-planted between spread legs. He breathes deep again because in less than two weeks he's become addicted to this smell, this one right here at the crux of these thighs. The scent is heavy, heady, it's sex and coming and cock, but it's more than that, it's the smell of _I want you,_ it's the potent scent of _I need you._ It's what John smells like before he fills Sherlock up.

He's not having these thinky-thoughts right now, hell no. Sherlock's just pushing his face into John and he's snuffling like some playful beast and then making both of them moan when he undoes his trousers and pushes a hand into his pants.

"Sher…" That's all John gets out, just an almost-word. He thinks about moving then doesn't because everything's absolutely perfect just like this: that retrousse nose nosing around between legs he could not possibly spread wider, the visual runway of Sherlock's back, from broad shoulders down to the bold rise of that linen-draped arse, the one that's now moving with a subtle rhythm as Sherlock palms himself.

For long seconds John's mesmerized by the faint rocking of those hips and then Sherlock rubs his face against the soft denim of his old jeans, sniffing deep and John looks down.

He can't see Sherlock's face, but John doesn't need to see it to know Sherlock's smiling. It's in the bump of his forehead against John's pubic bone, in the feline rub of cheek against thigh, in the almost-silly definitely-sexy huffing exhales—sharp, quick—so that Sherlock can take in long, slow—

"Mmmmmm…"

—humming breaths.

Over the long years there'll be many gifts John gives Sherlock, and bringing sex into his life is just one. A thousand and one. Because what John and Sherlock will make of physical love is…everything.

It'll be how they celebrate. How they calm, how they inflame. It'll be how they mark milestones, learn, teach, apologize, or just pass the time. It'll be how they start talking and it'll be what they do when they don't have the words. Sex and love-making and fucking will be how they forget wrongs, and how, afterward, they make things right.

Which is maybe the long, slightly lyrical way of saying that right now sex turns off Sherlock's brain a little—and more than enough. And so he closes his eyes and shoves his nose into the warmth of John, and he marks himself with the smell of the man, and even though John can't see his face, that serious, intense, beautiful face, he knows that right now Sherlock's one precious, simple, still too-rare thing: He's happy.

John's not doing so bad himself. As a matter of fact he's matching Sherlock hum for hum, with a side of breathy giggle when his lover headbutts his legs wider or shakes his head as he bites at an inseam.

And then there they are again, those black-clad hips, rocking. John notices them because Sherlock's stopped worrying textiles with his teeth, instead he's growling soft and low and he's busy down there, is Sherlock. He's taking care of business, and that business is tugging at his cock with one hand while he counter-balances against John's thigh with the other.

As for John, he's just barely thrusting into Sherlock's pretty face and because his lover's gone still almost everywhere, John knows he's concentrating on the gentle pressure of John's pressing—

A deep, sharp sound startles them both motionless.

After a moment John grins, slides a hand between his thigh and Sherlock's cheek. "Everything okay down there?"

_Okay? Okay?_

Sherlock's spent most of his adult life belittling primal urges—hunger? Sleep? Sex? Pah!

However, it appears he's just now run long fingers along the underside of his cock while his lover squirmed in such a way that a fold of denim brushed at Sherlock's _eyelashes_ and the combination of those simple sensations caused Sherlock Holmes to kind of bark.

To damn well _bark._

Sherlock sits back on his heels and scowls at nothing in particular, every inch of that smooth face radiating _what the fuck?_

John grins. "It's called desire, my love." Just nibbles at his lips a little, then murmurs "Ain't it grand?"

There's no answer for long seconds, so the good doctor tugs at the hand resting on his knee, reeling in his lanky fish until Sherlock rises and straddles his lap.

"Can you feel it?"

Sherlock looks down into dark eyes looking up at him and he wonders: How does John want the answer to that? Existential? Cosmic? Earthy? Because Sherlock can answer in every one of those ways.

_Yes, I can feel your desire as it relates to a need to perpetuate the existence of the species; I understand it as it pertains to humanity's need to affirm its place in the universe. And John, oh John, John…_

"I feel you."

He feels him in the too-fast beating of his own heart, in the breath catching in his throat, and he feels him, god yes he feels the hard ridge of John beneath him…

Palms flat against chair arms Sherlock rubs his arse along the length of John's erection. A simple, basic, _earthy_ need and if you ask, Sherlock'll tell you right now that primal urges have a lot more recommending them than he ever realized.

John sucks in a slow breath, lets it out in a groan. He does that again and again, until Sherlock's growling again and maybe he's ready to bark—the good detective's got no clue yet what _normal_ looks like for him as regards sex, it may include barking, who knows?—but John's just licked his thumb and placed it against the cock head peeking out the top of Sherlock's briefs and if there was a bay about to be born it's caught in Sherlock's throat along with his breathing.

Over the years Sherlock's turned the pain of not having what he wants—cases, purpose, friendship, love—into pleasure. For years frustrations were channeled into experiments, acidic verbal acrobatics, into armoring up, and tamping down desire until finally Sherlock's turned into one big ball of masochism, searching out the torments if they don't find him first.

Which is the long way of saying the reason Sherlock's slow-stroking John's cock with the crack of his clothed arse, the reason he doesn't just tear off his pants and jerk off over John's belly, is because it feels so damned good to want it, know he can get it, and still not _have it._

Yeah, well, John Watson's got other plans.

The good doctor catches his lover's eye and then looks down, until he knows they're both gazing at the same thing. John doesn't mean to, but he grins because this is a sight he never planned on seeing: His thumb poised over another man's penis, over _Sherlock's_ penis. And he sure as hell didn't expect to moan as he ran his thumb over the head of that penis and continue moaning—kind of loudly—as he sucked the pre-come from the pad of his thumb.

Over the long years there'll be many gifts Sherlock gives to John, and _seeing_ him will be just one.

Detecting faint frown lines at the corners of his lover's dream-shut eyes are how Sherlock'll know John's entered a nightmare from which he needs waking. Noticing the barest limp in one leg will be how Sherlock realizes John's under stress. Catching John's quick smiles as the good doctor listens to him muttering over an experiment will be how Sherlock knows John wishes he'd stop experimenting for a little while…

Which is maybe the long way of saying that there's a time and a place for deducing instead of asking, and so Sherlock rises to his knees over John's slid-low body, wraps a hand round his cock…and when a tongue darts out he brings the wet head of it to John's lips.

They both lick at the same time, they both murmur something low and greedy, but only one of them starts slowly masturbating against the other's mouth.

Steadying himself against the chair back with one hand, Sherlock's cock brushes again and again against John's lips, slicking them with pre-come. And because he needs to see what he feels John pushes Sherlock away just a little, until there's a thick glistening thread between tip and tongue.

The deep, greedy sound John makes doesn't startle, it sets them both to low laughter again.

Tugging Sherlock close John tries shoving his lover's cock into his mouth, but wanting and getting and _not having_ are still high on Sherlock's list, so he braces himself more firmly against the chair back and says softly, "Wait…"

Over the long years there'll be many gifts these two give each other, and pleasure will be just one.

"Wait…"

Hands will learn where to touch and linger. Tongues where to lick and squirm. Their bodies will learn how to move together, their fingers how to take each other apart.

"Wai…"

They wait and wait and then one of them doesn't want to wait anymore.

"Please?"

John moans his answer, tugging at hips until Sherlock's cock pushes his lips apart.

"Please…" Sherlock whispers again, thrusting too slow, too shallow.

John answers with the soft rake of nails.

"Please."

And then answers again with a hard rake of nails down his lover's back.

_"Please…"_

And he emphatically answers by leaning forward until nose and lips press against sweat-damp curls, and then finally…

_"Ooooooh."_

* * *

John knows Sherlock can see him doing it.

Hours later, after dinner, after washing up, after an experiment gone awry and more washing up, curled in bed, John knows Sherlock can see him stroking himself under the blanket.

Watching the slow movements, Sherlock asks: "What are you thinking about?"

John doesn't even open his eyes. "You."

Sherlock can't tear his away. "What specifically?"

John's eyes dance behind shut-tight lids. "When…when you…marked my mouth."

Sherlock wants to crawl beneath the covers and let John mark _him._ He doesn't. "Why?"

John arches his back, spreads his thighs until one leg presses against Sherlock. "Because you tasted…because I could taste you. Because you were so turned on you were _wet…"_ John licks his lips carefully. "God you were _dripping."_

Sherlock's thirty-four and there are some things he should already know but doesn't, some things he wants to know but is maybe afraid to—

"Ask."

The good detective grunts an affirmation, but instead of asking right away he reaches for John beneath the duvet. Seconds later he paints his own lips salty-wet, then sucks his fingers clean.

Hearing it, John groans.

As he sends that questing hand down below once more, Sherlock finally asks softly, "Is it normal to want you again?"

John opens his eyes in time to see Sherlock smearing his mouth wet once more, then licking his long fingers.

"Is it normal…" Sherlock sighs, snaking down below the duvet, murmuring, "…to be _erect_ again?

It'll take years before they fully learn what's normal for them…

"Yes, Sherlock, yes, Sherlock… _yes Sherlock!"_

…but they _will_ learn.


	12. ...John Calls Sherlock On Looking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After three years with John, one as his husband, Sherlock still thinks he doesn't look at other men. John's about to prove him wrong...

Sherlock thinks John doesn't know but John knows. John knows that Sherlock looks.

Not often, and not just at any man. Sherlock looks strictly at beautiful men. They may be tall or short, slim or full, they might be black or white, dark or ginger, but once in awhile Sherlock stops and Sherlock _looks._

Like now.

John turned from the TV and smiled at his briefly-still love. "Every time I play one of his later movies, you watch from the doorway."

Sherlock frowned and continued on into the kitchen and his experiment as if John hadn't spoken.

John followed. "He was so pretty when he was young, but you're never caught by his early work."

Sherlock fussed with a row of test tubes and pretended to be deaf.

"I'm a sucker for _My Fair Lady,_ but you like his Arthur, his de Winter, or the interviews I sometimes play because I know you like them."

Though all six tubes were identically empty, Sherlock squinted at the lot of them as if within each a tiny experimental drama was taking place.

"What is it about him that makes you stop and watch, even when I know you've got other things to do?"

Decision made, Sherlock plucked one of the tubes free of the rack.

"I suppose he's like you in some ways. He often does that thing you do, going still then moving quick."

Sherlock peered down the barrel of the tube as if it were a portal to some other dimension. A _silent_ dimension.

"For awhile he was sharp-featured like you, all showy cheekbone and jaw."

Sherlock began muttering to the tube, but not so loudly he couldn't hear John.

"But I don't think that's why you look."

Sherlock clinked glass against glass quietly, continued to pretend he was completely alone.

"I think it's because you like it when things don't fit."

Sherlock shoved a rayon tissue-wrapped finger into the tube. It would be absolutely juvenile to say John watched with interest, but what the hell, John watched with interest.

"For example, you like it when a mostly-quiet man shouts." The _your name_ and _in bed_ were implied.

Sherlock continued to, um, slowly finger his test tube.

"So I think you like his elegant speech but are fascinated that when he talks in that high-toned way he can often sound almost common."

Sherlock held the very clean test tube up to his eye but neglected to actually look at it, gazing instead at a kitchen cupboard, as if it was the thing he was pretending not to hear.

"He's big and got heavy as he got older, but his gestures are quick, almost delicate."

Sherlock tapped at his teeth with the tube, utterly negating his sanitizing efforts.

"His features are classic and yet there's something moderne about the man."

Sherlock had completely run out of things to do with the tube, so he held on to it and continued not listening to the cupboard.

"But the thing that you always stop for, what always makes you look up from what you're doing, is his laugh. It's husky, giggly, _sexy."_

Sherlock's always enticed when John deduces. Sure, he's usually deducing something Sherlock already knows, but that fails to mute the thrill he feels when John tries and succeeds in _understanding._

Yet what's better, sexier, what makes him go still and then a little shaky, is when John sees things he doesn't, then tells him something he doesn't know.

Because after three years with John, one as his husband, Sherlock still thinks he doesn't look at other men. To be fair, for a long time he actually _didn't._ And then here's the thing: Falling in love with _one_ man opened his eyes to, well, all men. It doesn't make sense to him, he doesn't like it, and yet there it is. Sometimes Sherlock's mind and body react on instinct, turning, looking, a little bit wanting.

And he seems to be the only one who cares.

"I often wonder about the why of beauty. Why is a flower so fair, why is the sweep of smoky eyes so arresting, why do we _look,_ what evolutionary purpose does it serve?"

Sherlock waited quietly for the answer. With a small smile John tugged out a kitchen chair, sat down, lifted open arms.

Sherlock briefly debated whether he was blind as well as deaf, decided after a moment that he was neither. He put the test tube down, then took his time straddling John.

"Do _you_ know, does that great big, wonderful brain tell you?"

Sherlock sighed long and low, a sort of apology for something John would never need apology for. Sherlock shook his head no.

"I don't really know either, but I think…well what if there's no other reason than it makes us happy?"

Sherlock closed his eyes. He didn't say _you make me happy,_ but brushed fingertips over John's ears. He smiled and that said everything.

In the sitting room Jeremy Brett, a dashing de Winter, looked right at the camera and said something about the daffodils at Manderley.

John and Sherlock failed to hear, mostly because someone pushed someone else onto the kitchen table and a brace of test tubes fell to the floor. Then someone said something filthy and started to giggle and the sound of it, oh lord the sound…it was husky, it was sexy.

And then someone did something not even remotely appropriate with a test tube and that's all you're going to know about that.

_For[Kuuttamo](http://kuuttamo.tumblr.com), who asked months ago if someone would write her a wee Jeremy Brett fic. Probably not what you had in mind, my dear, but I hope it makes you a smile, as your art always does me. Also for [Anarion](http://anarion.livejournal.com), who wanted to know about the first time Sherlock looked at other men. (P.S. "This Time No," continues in a week or two, after traveling is through...)_


	13. ...The Boys Came Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Sherlock, why are you being such a dick?' The best answer for a rhetorical question is silence, but Sherlock's never been very good with that under-rated virtue, so the consulting dick opened his mouth to answer his lover...

"Oh, I've got one! What do you call a group of bears."

John glanced around their restaurant table and when the Scotland Yard crowd remained mute, he looked to his sweetheart beside him.

And Sherlock rose—or fell, depending on your definition—to the occasion. "A pointless?"

John blinked. "What?"

Sensing a trap in the form of a pun—he does not _get_ them, he will never _get_ them, and more to the point he does not _wish_ to _get_ them—Sherlock responded as he always does when he thinks he's being mocked: With louder mockery. "That's what I'd call it. Or maybe a senseless? Perhaps an insipid?"

John's voice went low. "Stop."

Sherlock's voice carried. "I'll stop if you do."

John glanced at the dozen sets of eyes on them. Dropped his voice further. "Why are you being such a dick?"

Within weeks John'd be able to answer that question himself, but right now he's known Sherlock a little over three months and been his lover for not quite four weeks and the good doctor's still surprised when Sherlock's, well, a dick.

The best answer for a rhetorical question is silence, but like jokes and puns Sherlock's never been good with _that_ either, so he opened his mouth to actually _answer_ that whole dick question when he was interrupted by an exceedingly annoying noise.

*tink*tink*

*tink*tink*

*tink*tink*

Every head in the restaurant turned toward the high sound of flatware gently striking the side of a wine glass.

And because most of those at Greg Lestrade's anniversary party—twenty years with the Metropolitan Police Service—hadn't overheard John and Sherlock bickering, most of those one hundred assembled kept their gaze on Lestrade, expecting a speech, announcement, or _something_ interesting.

Well at least they got _that._

Because as Lestrade tapped his wine glass he smiled at the short, sandy-haired man sitting beside him. And that man, after a moment, smiled back. And then turned to his sweetheart.

"Sherlock," John Watson said, "I'm sorry. I was just trying to tell a silly joke."

If John doesn't yet understand why Sherlock is sometimes a damned dick, Sherlock still doesn't get it when John's response is _kind._ The great detective was still blinking his confusion when John half stood—the round table at which they sat was large and the chairs widely spaced—leaned close, and kissed Sherlock on the mouth.

Data, data, data, Sherlock lives-breathes- _feeds_ on data. When John has porridge in the morning Sherlock knows the good doctor's checked the forecast, rain is predicted, and John's plans are to enjoy a slow day indoors. When John rubs a leg on which he no longer limps he's paid the bills recently and feels guilty that he doesn't feel guilty that he's barely practicing medicine anymore.

But this, this, this…Sherlock could tell you eight separate scents he smelled during the course of that kiss—four of them from John, one so evocative it made Sherlock actually ache—he could tell you how many people gasped when their mouths met, who took the photograph that later made the rounds at the station (hell, at three other stations in two other boroughs), he can tell you what cologne John was wearing, what was in John's back pocket when he rested his hand on John's hip, and how fast both their hearts were pounding.

But what Sherlock wouldn't be able to tell you is why John did what he did there, then, in front of all of those people. Steady, mellow, quiet John, so very much the opposite of his flamboyant lover.

Sherlock also wouldn't be able to tell you why he placed one of those big hands at the back of John's warm neck, stood, held that kiss, then tugged his sweetheart close.

"Sherlock?"

The funny thing is, John could easily tell you why he did what he did. He did it because Sherlock, who may understand the subtle meaning behind a witness' glance when she hears a distant shout, doesn't yet understand subtle romantic gestures. So if John wanted Sherlock to _get_ it—even when you're an absolute dick I love you, I need you, and I want everyone to know that—he knew his sweetheart needed it spelled out big and bold, that Sherlock needed the emotional equivalent of parades, peacocks, and pyrotechnics.

"John?"

So their first 'important' public kiss? It wasn't a sweet stolen something in the hectic corridors of the Met, it wasn't a peck on the lips in front of a Regent Street crowd. It was a full-on French before one hundred fancy-dressed homicide cops.

"Uh, guys?"

And fifteen years on every last one of those cops remembers that kiss and an even half have tried to recreate its passion with their own sweetheart. Such was the example John and Sherlock put before them that it's not hyperbole to say nearly every one of them succeeded.

And a group of bears? They're called a sleuth.

_The heart of this story came from a wee entry in[Minutiae](http://archiveofourown.org/works/441850/chapters/780863). And a group of bears really is called a sleuth, which is pretty much utterly excellent._


	14. ...Mrs. Hudson Caught Them At It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knocking on doors has always been a formality for Liz Hudson...

Knocking on doors has always been a formality for Liz Hudson.

As delicate as she looks, as refined as that soft voice makes her sound, Mrs. Hudson is not a stereotype. She's as much a fine jumble of mismatched traits as any person living and one thing Liz does—along with crosswords, marrying poorly, and reflexively tidying up after people—is to walk in unannounced.

She's known since she was eleven and caught her parents sixty-nining each other that this is a tendency it was best to curb, but it doesn't matter how many Januarys she makes the resolution, walking in on people is one thing Elizabeth Ariadne Westminster Hudson has done her entire life and at this stage she sees no end in sight.

Which brings us to the ends she does see. And they have been legion.

There was, of course, the slightly fleshy ends of her parents, something Lizzie observed for a solid twenty seconds before realising they did not know she was there, she didn't _want_ them to know she was there, and she had no desire to know what they were doing. Maybe.

The next most memorable end she was never meant to witness came at twenty-two, when she walked in on her fussy flatmate just as the naked girl was climbing off her latest beaux and giving them the boot.

And so it went.

Through her long life Lizzie's walked in on first kisses, last rights, strangers on the toilet, and friends on a bender. She's heard secrets and swearing and soliloquies, and each and every time she's suddenly appeared in a place she wasn't expected, Liz Hudson's given a nod, paused briefly in case she was needed, then gone about her business.

That business might be putting a bit of shopping on your kitchen table and returning to her own flat. It could be finally fetching back that book you borrowed two months ago. Sometimes it's collecting the rent, reminding you she's off to Brighton for the weekend, or usually, most often, it's just checking in.

So yes, in her eventful life Elizabeth Hudson's seen much that wasn't meant for her eyes, but being as she's generally discreet and almost always there when you need her, most people on whom she's got the goods—so to speak—find they're more comforted than cross with this, her most unpredictable tendency.

Which naturally brings us to the first time Mrs. Hudson caught John and Sherlock having sex.

* * *

It was only a few weeks after they first became lovers and it all started with _caring,_ something Sherlock was still conflicted on _doing,_ even as he watched himself do it.

Because caring involved emotion, which made you human, which led to vulnerability, and long ago Sherlock had learned that it was easier to survive if you just didn't care.

And then John Hamish Watson stood in a badly-lighted lab, looking for a flatmate, and then four months later—that would be today—he stood listing to the left in their kitchen doorway, staring across the sitting room, tea dribbling from his mug as he kind of slept on his feet.

The night before had involved eighteen hours of pouring over every book the London Library had on the history and course of the Thames in the hope they could date a vital bit of evidence alluded to by the victim and, frankly, John was knackered.

When the warm splash of tea woke him, and lifted Sherlock's head from case notes, both looked at the other a long second and though John wasn't thinking anything much beyond _I think I'm too tired to swallow,_ Sherlock's brain was buzzing along several tracks:

* The victim's note had said, _The statue's hidden where York Watergate's touched by tides—_ but how was that possible when the Thames hadn't flowed near that gate for over a century?

* When would Bazalgette call with the results of the tox screening?

* Did the carbamide culture need more ammonia?

* Why did he want to pull John against his chest and stroke his soft, soft hair?

Before Sherlock could answer any of these John sighed, put his now-tepid tea onto the kitchen table, then scuffed over to the sofa. There he sat down heavy a couple feet from Sherlock and was prepared to stare into space for the next little bit of forever when he felt a gentle tug at his dressing gown sleeve.

Without words the good doctor tipped sideways, head in Sherlock's lap, and passed out.

And Sherlock then pretended he wasn't there.

Because Sherlock didn't yet know how to gracefully acknowledge how much he cared about John, how much John's well-being mattered, or how much _better_ he felt when John was doing nothing more than sitting beside him.

Sherlock would figure it all out eventually, but first he'd figure out where the statuette was hidden and it turned out to be as easy as initial caps. Remembering the victim was a persnickety professor of English and had a holiday home in Brighton, Sherlock realised that she referred not to York watergate, but to her seaside croft _named_ York Watergate.

On something of a small roll, and with a lap full of softly-breathing John, Sherlock just went right ahead and figured out how much ammonia the carbamide culture could tolerate, how best to hide the burn marks on the underside of the kitchen table, when to tell Lestrade he accidentally dropped his pilfered mobile into the toilet, and why he had an erection (Sherlock, not Lestrade).

This last puzzle was the easiest to solve, and certainly the one that most caught Sherlock's attention.

Facing toward the sofa now, head still pillowed on Sherlock's thighs, John huffed warm, steady breaths over a part of Sherlock just barely covered by a thin dressing gown. That part showed its appreciation by growing slowly until eventually it peeked from between dark blue silk.

So early in their relationship Sherlock was still happily cataloguing everything to do with sex: The sensations, their causes, his and John's responses. He was already pretty certain this study would never grow boring because, like figuring out who-done-it, there was such pleasure in the learning that it created its own addictive feedback loop.

So for quite awhile Sherlock would have contentedly sat on the sofa and watched John breathe against him, he'd have watched himself wax and wane, but then John did one simple thing.

He opened his mouth, but not his eyes.

At first Sherlock did nothing.

Then John flicked out his tongue, the tip swiping against Sherlock's pulled-tight testicles.

Then Sherlock did a couple somethings.

He began waxing mightily. Then he wriggled up a little while John wriggled down a bit. Finally he took hold of his penis and placed its slick tip near John's open mouth.

With a questing head bob and another flick of tongue, the purblind doctor at last located his prize.

As warm mouth slid down warm cock, Sherlock's head fell back, his eyes closed, and he began to a little bit stroke.

* * *

It was about then that Elizabeth Hudson walked up the seventeen steps to 221B.

She did not sneak, slink, or sidle up those stairs. She walked up steady as she always did, but her tread was not a heavy one. Slight and light as a young girl, Liz Hudson chatters as much as she does because so often she simply goes unnoticed otherwise.

Today wasn't one of the chattery days, but as has been mentioned, neither was she stealthy.

So when she gained the summit and stood in her tenants' doorway she was just a little bit surprised they'd not heard her, but then really not so much—clearly they had other distractions.

Liz, at this juncture, had not one.

Look, it's like this: When you've spent a lifetime walking in on things, you get used to expecting unexpected things. So finding her tenants engaged in a sexual act with their door wide open didn't startle her. She didn't giggle nervously, flutter her hands, or murmur an apology. No, Elizabeth Hudson for long seconds _looked._

Before John moved in, Sherlock often left the flat door open and Liz had caught him in every possible state of undress. After John moved in nothing changed really and pretty much everyone acknowledged—without saying one word about it—that if you metaphorically do a strip show in front of your open window, sometimes others will see you doing it—and then _watch._

This by way of explaining a certain woman's lack of contrition as she gazed on what she would later describe to her best friend as, "One of the sweetest, naughtiest hummers I've ever seen."

And Liz Hudson would forever _be_ the only one who saw that sweet thing. Because while he masturbated himself, clutching his cock down low, Sherlock kept his eyes tightly closed. And as he sucked at, teethed, and tongued the head of Sherlock's cock John did not open his eyes, not once.

So Liz saw it all for both of them and Liz had a few thoughts.

She thought she should probably tip-toe off about now, it really was the polite thing to do. And she would, very soon, as soon as she was done having the rest of her thoughts.

The next in that particular queue was _well that's a lovely relief._ Because Liz was a little bit amazed and a lot pleased that these two fine men had fit themselves together so well and so quickly.

Elizabeth Hudson's third thought was a familiar one: _Why did I come up here again?_

The answer to that was briefly, annoyingly elusive and she actually expended a good five second thinking about it, then realised _it could wait._

Liz might have continued thinking a whole series of thoughts, effectively immobilising herself right where she was, but Sherlock's chest started rising and falling fast and he started huffing and puffing like a baritone freight train, and really that might not have been enough to get her legs going but then John started moaning in response, and Liz quite quickly had her final, suddenly motivating thought: _It is absolutely well past time I invite Mr. Chatterjee up for tea._

Elizabeth Ariadne Westminster Hudson had no way of knowing right then that she had again selected a beau that would not in the long run be much good for her, but until that unpleasant discovery she would soon be enjoying many late-night liaisons with the attentive, too-charming shopkeeper she's had her eye on for well over a year.

* * *

Both John and Sherlock had vague awareness of noises that were not their own, but like a burp that's escaped you in a silent room, there's just not a whole lot you can do about some things after the fact. So though they sensed back in their reptile brain that another creature had come and gone, neither stopped what he was doing.

No, Sherlock continued to jerk down low, while John continued to suck up high, and each continued to communicate with the other through a series of soft sighs and grunts.

Only six and a half weeks into their romantic relationship they're still learning one another's ways, but one thing is already set in stone: They will not hurry. Because you try falling in love for the first time in your thirties and see how hungry you are for everything, for all of it. And because wise men know that hunger is best satiated by lingering, each of these wise men…played with his food.

Which is the indelicate way of saying that John slid his mouth slowly off Sherlock's erection until his head was pillowed somewhere around the middle of his lover's thighs, and the head of Sherlock's cock was pressed lightly against his lips.

Looking down at John, Sherlock saw his lover's eyes were still closed but that he was grinning, mouth open and waiting.

So, resting the slightly shaky fingers of one hand on John's cheek, Sherlock used the other to continue a careful wank.

It was not quite as easy as it sounds, staying fairly still, keeping the head of his cock close to John's questing mouth. But Sherlock is motivated by puzzles and had, six weeks previous, learned to his great surprise that this included sexual challenges.

So, with a further cant of his hips the tip of Sherlock's cock maintained contact with John's lips and tongue and the good detective proceeded to carefully masturbate himself to orgasm, watching his come splash into John's mouth, watching John open wider and slide just a little nearer to be sure he caught it all.

* * *

Twenty-five minutes after she'd returned to her own flat, Elizabeth Hudson had a few more thoughts.

The first was: _The teapot, that's what I went up there for._ John had borrowed hers yesterday when he'd been unsure if the brown sludge in theirs was just unnervingly thick tea or a biohazard. No matter, Liz would fetch her pot later and in the meantime she'd just use her lack as a nice reason to get her morning cuppa from Speedy's.

Liz's second thought was along the lines of Mr. Chatterjee's lines. He had the kind of build she'd always favoured in a man: spare and sinewy, with a delicacy of gesture she found captivating.

The next thought Mrs. Hudson had—and the final one for the purposes of this missive—came when Liz heard Sherlock's low shout. Smoothing her dress, picking up her purse, Liz finally headed toward the cafe, and thought, _well I hope Mr. Chatterjee has even half that staying power._

As Liz would learn nearly two years later—when she learned of the wife in Doncaster, and the one in Coventry—Mr. Chatterjee did, he so very much _did._

_Some prompt requests are perennial, and for me people asking when Mrs. Hudson first came upon the boys having sex has been one. So Imdrowninginfootwear_ _was one inspiration for my finally writing this (thank you!), and so was a sleepy little ginger dog I know who sensed the ice cream held by her nose and who, never opening her eyes, simply flicked out a tongue and started licking it._


	15. …Sherlock Was the Grown-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The first time I saw a dead body at a crime scene I vomited on my shoe." Sherlock looked off into space, into the past. 
> 
> "My left shoe. An Armani. It was nice."

"What do you mean useless?"

"Look at the words," John growled, "Their meaning is fairly clear. Useless. As in _without use."_

It seemed Sherlock still had no clue what language the good doctor spoke so John leaned close and said slowly, as if to a child, "Unnecessary. Expendable. Extraneous." John blinked in thought. "Look at that, I may have just invented [Vex, Um, and Dis's](http://archiveofourown.org/works/704251/chapters/1298990) little brothers."

_One, two, three…_

When his confusion is profound, counting is how Sherlock gives his brain the seconds it needs to get its genius on, the space to _figure shit out._

… _four, five, six…_

But before genius-type revelation could take place John stood up swift and straight, as if a string had been pulled taut. "It's okay." John's face cleared. "I'm sorry. I'm—I'll shut up now. I…"

John huffed, made a fist, then two, but that wasn't enough, that wasn't _away_ enough, so he closed his eyes tight and suddenly he was gone, gone, gone.

_John._

There are places John goes where Sherlock can't follow. Because unlike his impetuous husband, John Watson has learned the fine art of self-denial. Like most of us he buys into the concept of _I really have no right._ He's perfected the art of _it's fine, never mind._ Unlike the man to whom he's married John's learned to be a god damn grown up and sometimes he'll keep calm and fucking carry on if it half-kills him.

_John._

Sherlock has the emotional restraint of an eight year old, and _since_ he was an eight year old Sherlock's done his best to spit out the poisons infecting him. He rails at fools, mocks idiots, he growls and hisses and whines and by such means has learned to route whatever worm is digging toward the core of him.

But Sherlock's husband has not.

"John?"

It wasn't fair what John did next and he knew it wasn't but he did it anyway. Standing there very still and closed off and _away,_ he shifted the burden of his grievance to his husband. He stood there in his closed-off world and he waited to see what Sherlock would say, he waited to see if Sherlock _would fucking fix it._

Literally rising to the challenge Sherlock stood from his desk, opened both hands, his mouth, but…how do you fix a broken part you can't see? How does a child make well a man?

… _seven, eight, nine…_ "Oh."

They're five years married, seven together and though he's nowhere near as gifted at the art of understanding as is John, Sherlock's been known to be pretty handy with a clue and in the last few minutes John had given him plenty. Suddenly Sherlock got it, he absolutely got it.

"The first time I saw a dead body at a crime scene I vomited on my shoe." Sherlock looked off into space, into the past. And then he counted again because John's taught him the fine art of timing. After he was sure of the result he said, "My left shoe. An Armani. It was nice."

John Watson, still shut off behind closed eyes, dropped his chin to his chest and grinned.

Sherlock splashed an answering smile into the morning light. "Because I was worried it would happen again I coaxed the detective I was nominally working with—this was years before Greg—to get me into the Westminster morgue. She eventually did and I was fine. I saw three corpses in one day and I was fine."

John hadn't yet opened his eyes or hands but his ears, Sherlock knew they were wide open.

"The next crime scene corpse I vomited again." _One beat for timing, two…_ "On the same shoe. Apparently I turn to the left when voiding."

John's shoulders fell, his hands opened, and he giggled for a good ten seconds before looking up and saying, "You did not."

Sherlock moved round his desk and closer to John but didn't touch him, "Oh yes I did. Five more times after that, each worse than the last because I was waiting for it, dreading it, and yet all I could do was _do it."_

"Always at crime scenes? Was Greg there for any of these?"

Sherlock sighed. "Just forget about that and you're missing my point. The only thing I could do each time was _deal with it._ Move forward, so I could get closer to what I wanted to do."

John fisted his hands again. "Sometimes moving on, moving forward, _getting there…_ it seems impossible."

Sherlock let the words echo in the silence awhile. "Seems. A qualifier. An acknowledgement that a feeling may not reflect reality. It _seems_ impossible. Yet others've done it and so clearly it's _not."_

In silence John acknowledged this truth, then stated another. "I'm tired, Sherlock. I'm nearly forty-fucking-eight and I'm just tired of feeling…almost." John sat heavy on the edge of the desk.

Even now the good doctor sometimes felt guilty he no longer practiced medicine. More rarely he felt…secondary; a simple afterthought when people thought of his husband. Recently he'd felt both acutely and together and his response had been to write a book.

 _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes—_ he'd give it a less _Boys Own_ title if it was ever fucking, god damn, bloody-well looked at by one single sodding agent _ever—_ was the result and at first he'd thought the book was good. "Better than good. Sherlock, I think it could be great."

That had been eleven months, fifty-seven rejections, and one expiration of his medical licence ago. Today had been rejection fifty-eight and maybe that would have been fine, but his birthday was around the corner and apparently that had exhausted his last reserve.

"If you're tired, rest."

John chuffed out an exasperated breath, closed his eyes again, got ready to stop hearing, again.

"Just for awhile. Because that's exactly as long as these things take. Awhile."

John tilted his head. He was still ready to stop listening but he hadn't decided to do so. Not just yet.

"Awhile isn't giving up. It's exactly what it is: Gathering strength to try again."

"You don't."

Sherlock's giddy-high laugh was so unexpected John looked up and reflexively smiled back.

"What did you say to me last week, after I took three days closing a case that should have taken three _hours?"_

John grinned wide, "Ah, the weekend of the great pout." In a nursery sing-song John trilled, "You're a pudding, a great lumpy pudding, you haven't moved all day you giant lazy git?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, sat beside his husband, sobered. "What do you want to do John, what do you really want to do?"

Without hesitation: "The book. I want to finish the book."

Sherlock leaned heavy against John, something he years ago learned to do without shame. "All right. So you'll be forty-fucking-eight soon, then, I suspect, forty-fucking-nine. You'll be those things anyway?"

John adjusted so they fit together better. "Yeah. You keep trying to make me old before my time but it hasn't worked yet."

"'Well then.' To quote a wise man I know upon the occasion of my graceful fall from a two inch kerb."

John sighed. "'Rest.' Fine. _Fine."_

"And then?"

"Then the book. I had the will to start. I'll find the will to finish."

Sherlock slid fingers into the hair at the back of John's neck, tugged until John's throat was bared.

"But first we'll go to that B&B in Brighton, the one where [I had those terrible clams](http://archiveofourown.org/works/549747)."

John sighed. "You do know I'm going to get them out of you, the stories of you throwing up on your pretty shoes?"

Sherlock shifted, nibbled at taut skin, murmured, "Well you can _try_ John. You can certainly try."

_Life is one long lesson in perseverance, isn't it? You achieve one summit only to find another rises ahead. Every single time this happens you've got a choice: Go on or give in, go toward what you want, or say what you don't mean: "this is enough, I can make do with this." By all means stop when you honestly want to, but if you want to gain a summit remember this: Perseverance works. It works, it works, it works—look at the people you admire, it worked for them. So keep going, keep trying. Slow but sure. It's your turn to be the one admired, so persevere._


	16. …John Gave Up Trying to Surprise Sherlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sherlock, I'm going to smite you. On your birthday. What will people say?"

"You said birthdays were boring. You asked for a surprise."

"Technically, I did."

"I'm not an idiot, I can hear the air quotes Sherlock. Define _technically."_

"You asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said surprise me, I didn't exactly mean I required a surprise. If you see the difference."

"To paraphrase a Vulcan of which I'm fond, a difference that makes no difference is no difference."

"If you say so John."

"You don't like this do you?"

"I didn't say that."

"So you like it?"

"I didn't say that."

"I'm going to smite you. On your birthday. What will people say?"

"I'm sure I don't know, John. I'm certain I care even less."

"Okay, this was a bad idea. I sort of knew that at the start. It's just that…I thought it would be memorable."

"It's memorable John. I'm not going to forget this. I may try. I doubt I'll succeed."

"It's just that you know so damn much, you know? You know where I'm going to scratch before I even itch, you guess—"

"—I never guess—"

"—yes you do, what I'm going to make for dinner, you figure out what's in a foot-square box even when the gift is a tiny little prostate stimulator—"

Sherlock's entire body recoiled.

"—and I'm sorry about what it did to your…when you…look, do you see why sometimes I get desperate?"

With effort Sherlock managed to unclench most muscles. "You really don't have to be."

"I hate things like this but you've never done anything like it so I thought, well, it'd be a nice surprise. And one that wasn't boring."

"Thank you, John, this is certainly not boring."

"You hate things like this, don't you?"

"Apparently I do. But I didn't know that until just now, so thank you for that as well. You've successfully caught me unawares _and_ afforded me datum I did not previously possess."

"You're getting polite, Sherlock."

"It would assuredly seem I am."

"You only get really polite and wordy when you're trying to not kill someone."

"As ever, you know me intimately my diminutive inamorato."

"Would it help if I promise to never do this again?"

Sherlock gave the question some thought, then asked, "Define 'help.'"

John sighed. After ten years with the man he's not even sure why he tries. Surprises are like tickling. It's fun to foist the things on someone else, but no one wants either for themselves. "Would it placate your pique if I swore that I'll never try to stun and amaze you again?"

Sherlock gave this question some thought, then answered it twice. "First, you never cease to stun and amaze, John."

John opened his mouth. Sherlock continued to talk. "In your _John-_ like way. _This_ is not your way. Your way is the way of proving that woolen goods, when used inappropriately, make stunning sex aids. Your way is the way of asking a notorious criminal for a light for the cigarettes you don't smoke and then smiting him when he looks down to strike the match. So don't worry about stunning or amazing me in some misguided attempt to keep my attention. You have it. You'll always have it."

John closed his mouth. Sherlock continued to talk. "Second, you can indeed placate my pique. I propose that you entertain me while we await rescue."

At the thought of rescue, both men looked down. Which was actually up.

Yes, they were still belly-to-belly and bound together at their ankles. And indeed, they were still hanging from the end of a bungee cord. And yes, the bungee cord was still frustratingly snagged on a section of bridge abutment. And far above them the instructor was most assuredly still yelling down reassurances, as she had been for the last ten minutes.

"I think I have some ideas on the entertainment front."

John stuck out his bum. He pointedly waited until Sherlock imitated the movement. In the resulting void two small doctorly hands just fit. There was the sound of a zipper unzipping. There was soft swearing when a button popped and hit John in the eye before falling far and away into the calm river below.

Then there was silence until there was sighing, soft sighing as a perking penis was fetched out of dove grey birthday knickers.

"Oh look at you," whispered John. "I'm so glad I bought the green and blue ones as well."

Another soft moan conveyed that Sherlock was also glad.

John petted the wee bit of exposed grey cashmere with his free hand. "I'm happy you like them. We can buy the rest of the outfit, too. Would you like that?"

Sherlock looked down—up, _up—_ as John's pretty hand stroked his burgeoning erection. "The suspenders and stockings—" He grunted politely at a particularly fine fondle. "—would be a superlative addition to the undergarments."

John smiled; he'd suspected as much. He thumbed the wet tip of Sherlock's hard-on in a particularly pleasant way. "Shall we get the gauzy little skirt as well?"

John licked precome from his fingers, Sherlock shivered seductively, "Yes please."

Far above, the instructor said something that may have contained the words _any minute now._ John realised they would have to move with a certain alacrity.

"I can't wait to see you in the sheer little thing, love. It's so tiny it won't even cover your gorgeous behind."

Sherlock clutched John's shoulders and spread his thighs the few centimetres he was able. "Indisputably the skirt will fail to conceal my munificent…" Sherlock panted prettily. "…assets."

Stroking faster the good doctor murmured, "You can stride round the flat like you do—" More voices from above. "—but without the knickers, so all your _you_ peaks out."

One fine, tumescent column of Sherlock's _him_ peaked well out of soft, grey panties.

"Then maybe you'll let me lift the skirt's little hem a bit so I can suck your cock."

A shiver skittered through detectivey limbs at the same time as the bungee cord trembled. Someone said _almost there._

"If you think that's all right. While you're working I mean."

Two pale eyes kind of rolled up into the back of a swiftly nodding, dark-haired head.

The bungee cord gave a jerk.

"Lovely. I'll get on my knees right there in the sitting room and swallow you down."

Sherlock made an abrupt, the-exact-opposite-of-pained sound.

"Won't want your sweet bum to be lonely in the meantime, so maybe I'll wriggle a few fingers inside you. Would you like—"

Sherlock nodded so hard they began gently swaying from side-to-side.

"And afterward I'll use your come to slick you up back there, make you wet with yourself."

Sherlock banged his head gently against John's. The bungee cord shuddered, and thrummed a little vibratory tune. They began inching slowly up.

"Then," John panted, "oh I bet your pretty little skirt will be a mess but we won't care. After you're ready, after you're so ready, I'll lift its sweet little hem again until I can see the swell of your gorgeous behind and I bet you—"

Sherlock spread trouser-bound legs wide as they would go.

"—yes, yes, I bet you open yourself and—"

One hand in a death grip on John's shoulder, Sherlock clutched his own balls with the other.

"—then I'll slip inside you, it'll be so easy my love, you'll be so very—"

The bungee jerked haltingly upward, which had the lovely side effect of amplifying John's motions over Sherlock's cock.

"—wet and wanting, you'll—"

Words floated from above.

"—still be coming a little, yes, your body still—"

John would never know if it was his words or the sudden vibratory shudder of the rope that sent Sherlock over the edge, but over the edge he did go. And, as John looked down—up, as John looked _up—_ he was sure of one thing though…and yes, there it was.

John was sure he was the one who was going to get it right in the eye.

* * *

Seven tucked in and tidied minutes later, they at last stood innocent and bandy-legged on the bridge.

As they accepted admiring condolences for their brave patience, Sherlock fingered John's fringe and whispered, "Dr. Watson, I do believe you've put product in your hair."

Tossing coupons for free bungee jumps into the river below when the instructor wasn't looking, John giggled and whispered back, "Happy birthday, Sherlock."

_Some say Sherlock Holmes' birthday is today, 6 January. Happy 160th birthday Sherlock! (In other news: For the sake of my disordered brain, I'm marking this series of stand-alone stories as complete. I'll be adding more first times in the future though, so do please subscribe or share prompts, thank you!)_


	17. …The Black Dog Didn't Win

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (This is not a new story, but one published to LiveJournal not quite two years ago; somehow it didn't make it over here yet.)
> 
> When the black dog comes for Sherlock, what wouldn't John do to divert him? Nothing's the answer to that. There's absolutely nothing John wouldn't do.

"—because he owns me. Because he's had me since that first day and he knew it. Even I knew it."

Sherlock sat perfectly still in the austere metal chair, fingers steepled and pressed against his mouth. Now, as on so many occasions before, it was the only way he could stop himself from talking.

"I followed him right from the start. 'Meet me at the flat,' he said that first day, and I did. I groused about it for what...all of four, five seconds? And then with a wink he tied on the first of his strings and though it took a few hours, I felt its seductive tug and oh how I followed. And I haven't stopped."

Sherlock watched the man in the chair across from him, watched him be perfectly still except that motor mouth, but even that was hard to see in the pub's half-light and the quick dark of a December evening.

"It didn't hurt that I was used to following, I was in the army for heaven's sake. In the military you're well-trained to hop when your superior says hop. And there's always someone higher up to boss you around, unless you're at the top of the food chain. I never have been, not then, not now."

Sherlock's gaze was caught by the flutter of one of the drapes on the long window beside their table and for a moment he thought, _They should seal that against drafts._

"—but here's the thing Mr. Holmes. Sometimes you only find your place when you're _put_ there. That's what he does, again and again. He puts me in my place. And nearly every time I let him. I want him to do it. I need him to do it. I need those strings."

Sherlock watched the man watch him. He wished the light was better. Then he didn't. What he could see was enough. He's not sure why he expected the man to be done up in cosmetics or club clothes but he did. Amazing what you pick up from television, even when you pretend you're not watching it.

"Does that answer your question?"

Sherlock shook his head, a little dazed. The man, sitting across from him, so self-assured and certain, the way he talked, the near-intimacy of what he said, it wasn't what he'd expected at all.

"You don't even remember what you asked, do you?"

Sherlock wouldn't admit this truth, so he did what he does when he has no answer: He remained silent, pretended he hadn't heard.

The short-haired man across from him grinned. "I've confused you. I've turned that famous head of yours, haven't I? I should be flattered." The grin grew wider. "You're so like him. I can always tell when someone will be. Sometimes the bold ones, at first they're quiet, contained. But there's a…a sort of red shift to the body, as if you're moving so fast you're just about bending the light."

Sherlock smiled. He might not know much about astronomy, but he knew enough to be impressed that this man did.

"Anyway, your question was why do I do this. Why let a stranger…touch me. Well I don't let just any one have me, Mr. Holmes, just the ones like him, just the ones who'll touch me the way he does."

Finally Sherlock wanted to say something and it surprised him what he wanted to say. He said it anyway. "Do you love him?"

The older man across the table grinned again. Sherlock knew what that grin meant, knew what the man would say before he said it.

"What do _you_ think?"

Self-contained and confident, the blonde didn't say _deduce me,_ but that was pretty much the challenge.

 _This is not what I expected,_ Sherlock thought, _not at all._ "Do you want the long answer or the longer answer?"

The man grinned wider. "Is everything they say about you true?"

Sherlock heard the words the way they were intended: As a compliment. "You love him very much. You know how I know, without seeing you thumb at your ring finger when you talk about him, without noticing the dance of your gaze as you look in the distance and imagine his face, his 'strings,' his touch…I know you love him because you have _words._ So many words. He inspires you."

The man finished his third beer as the fourth was put on the table in front of him. "How smart you are, Mr. Holmes." The man drank deep; kept his hand around the chilly glass. Sherlock pretended not to notice the sharp little points pushing at the man's thin black shirt.

"Before him I didn't have the words. Afterward…well I had thousands. I wrote and I wrote…I write and I write, and almost all of them are about how he moves through the world, how he changes it, makes it better. Sometimes I talk about how he makes me better, but not usually. Most of the words are his. As they should be."

Sherlock drank a bit of water. He watched the man drink his beer. He wanted the man to drink, it made him loquacious. Judging by the loose way he sat, the _openness_ of his body, Sherlock was pretty sure it would make him salacious, too.

"Are you ready to fuck, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock choked on the water he wasn't just then drinking.

"Sorry, it's just such a challenge. You. This. There's so many things they _say."_

Sherlock's vanity focused him fast. "What exactly do these 'they' say?"

The man stood up, drank the last of his beer down. "Walk with me and I'll tell you."

Sherlock frowned up at the man. Drinks, talking, walking…was this what rent boys ordinarily did? Sherlock didn't think so. No, this one wasn't ordinary, not at all. The good detective felt his heart kick in his chest. It kicked harder still when the man opposite extended a hand.

Sherlock stood, took that hand. A moment later his arm was tucked through the crook of the man's arm and out the door they went, strolling like common lovers.

The December night was cold, and Sherlock felt the short man shiver as the pub door closed behind them. "Do you need—"

"No, I like being cold. Sometimes. I like…shaking. Sometimes."

Even as he spoke the small man began trembling faintly. Sherlock fought the urge to put his arm around him.

"So…what do they say about you, Mr. Holmes?" The man took a deep breath, sighed it out. "Oh, you already know so much of it, don't you. There's the petty things people say because they're jealous, there's the stupid things they say because they're ignorant, and then there's the breathless things they say because everyone wants to believe in heroes."

The man stroked the hand Sherlock had tucked through his arm, caught himself, stopped. "They paint you up as a superhero though, those breathless ones. They say you can run further, think faster, fight harder than ordinary men. They dream you taller than you are, more beautiful than any woman, with the grace of a dancer."

The man waited for Sherlock to say something, but Sherlock knew he was waiting, so he said nothing.

"Oh you are a vain thing, aren't you? You want me to assure you that they're right, don't you? You want me to tell you you're pretty."

Maybe the man laughed, or maybe he was shaking harder, Sherlock wasn't sure.

"You never did answer my question, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock was sure about one thing, though: What the question was. And his answer.

"Yes," he whispered, "I want to."

The man was stroking Sherlock's hand again, though he didn't realize he was doing it. Then the man stopped walking, stopped stroking, stared ahead. "Not your flat. I know it's near." In a splash of streetlight Sherlock counted the man's heart beats by the pulse in his neck. He had a pretty neck.

"You know what else is near." The man started walking, presumed Sherlock would follow.

Sherlock did.

It was just before midnight, two weeks before Christmas, and it was cold. No one was in shut-tight Regent's park. Both knew how to 'break' in, though each went about it differently.

The man found a gap in an old wooden part of the fence, pushed aside shrubbery to get through. Sherlock climbed the iron railing, jumped to the ground, great coat flaring like wings.

"You're a show off," the man laughed.

"Everyone knows that."

"God you're vain."

Sherlock laughed. "Not nearly as much as you think."

The man took Sherlock's hand, walked him away from the street lights and deeper into shadow.

"How about here?" He tugged Sherlock close, until their bellies touched. He didn't wait for an answer, just reached for the buttons on a long wool coat.

"I don't want—"

"Liar," the man said. "You want. And want. And want. There's no end to what you want Mr. Holmes, that's your curse. It's not that big brain that drives you mad, that's not where you really burn."

Hand fisted in great coat, the man pulled Sherlock low by himself going to his knees. "Here," hand to a fast-beating heart, "you burn here and always have. You're the exact opposite of what they say, you're nothing _but_ heart." The man mouthed at Sherlock's neck, returned the pressure of Sherlock's slow-thrusting hips.

Of course the man was right, but Sherlock's greatest arch enemy has always been—will always be—himself. He wars against who he is because almost always it's the opposite of boring. Deny the things you want, the things you crave right down to your bones, and the resulting obsession will fill tedious hours, the devious planning to get, have, or take will make long nights short when you desperately need diversion from the black thoughts in your own head.

Which is the long way of saying that Sherlock stopped thrusting and sat back on his heels, holding his breath so he wouldn't have to hear it shake, so he could pretend awhile longer that he could stop this, say no, that he could lift his chin and murmur, "It was for an experiment, you see…"

It took a moment before he realized the hand reaching and touching was his own. He rose to his knees, brought the other gloved hand up, danced fingertips over the man's bare, bare throat. "Tell me how he touches you."

The man should have been shaking, wearing nothing but a midnight-black shirt, no jumper, no coat. Again Sherlock wanted to hold him but again he refrained.

"At first…he touched me as if he were desperate." The man's eyes closed, dreamy, maybe a little drunk. "But that was years ago, when he was still ravenous." The man moved closer, until Sherlock's open coat fell around him. "I don't miss those hungry days."

The man slid both hands up to Sherlock's waist. "Now, six years on…no, it's seven…now he touches me as if reminding himself I'm there, and reminding me that he's near. He touches me to remind us both that we belong beside each other, that everything that went before was…static. It was waiting."

Sherlock was the one with the coat, the gloves, but he leaned against the smaller man, hungry for his body, his heat. "Those strings…"

The man tugged Sherlock's too-tight shirt from his too-tight belt, slipped chilly hands against warm skin. "Weren't you listening?"

Face tucked against the man's pretty neck, Sherlock nodded.

"Good. Then I know you figured out the rest. That I was lost without him. That without his strings I'd fall. He keeps me standing. He _keeps_ me."

The man unbuckled Sherlock's belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers. "Now it's time to shut it, mister. It's time to get what you came for."

Sherlock was the one wearing the coat and the gloves but he was the only one shaking.

The man wrapped his arms around the kneeling detective's back and said, "Tell me why you're here."

No one said or did much of anything for long seconds, then the man got busy, wriggling fingers into Sherlock's pants, pulling his erection free, making a small sound at the warm, heavy feel of it.

"Tell me," he said, wrapping his arm tighter at Sherlock's waist, licking his bare hand and stroking slow.

Sherlock didn't speak, just looked down and in the faint, faint light watched that short-fingered hand work him gently. Even as he gazed, mesmerized, the man's touch lightened, a tease. Sherlock grunted, looked up, spoke up.

"Because sometimes I'm mean. I'm foul. I'm…bad."

The man's hand stilled and the moment it did Sherlock placed his over it and stroked himself with both their hands.

"I'm moody and mouthy and depressed and depressed and depressed and—and sometimes I take it out on the only person who matters." Sherlock scowled. "And he lets me. I don't know why."

The arm round Sherlock's waist got tighter. "Love?"

Sherlock watched the man's hand move in perfect, long strokes, again transfixed. It'd been a little bit of forever since he'd had a hand job.

"But why?"

The man's touch lightened again. "You tell me."

 _Just fuck me,_ Sherlock wanted to say, was never going to say. _Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. Stop making_ me _talk._ Yet Sherlock knew the man wasn't going to stop. It was why he'd picked him, after all.

While Sherlock pretended to think about his answer the man let go of Sherlock's cock, sat back on his heels and looked up at the rather debauched detective. What distant light reached them sketched his face in pale curves. And Sherlock knew that if he didn't say something in the next few moments this was done.

"Because I'm rare."

The man drifted a gentle hand over Sherlock's belly.

"Because there's no one who can do what I do."

The hand on his belly slid south.

"Because I amaze him, charm him, infuriate him, I _interest_ him."

Fingers slicked over the head of Sherlock's erection, came away wet.

"And because—"

The man sucked on his fingers, whisper-hissed-moaned. He rose again, shifted until he was behind the kneeling detective. And then he slid his hand into snug briefs, pushing two spit-slick fingers inside Sherlock's arse, moaned again when he found inside _wet._

"—b-because _I'm_ all those things and I picked him…he feels…mmm…r-rare, too."

The man pressed his forehead to Sherlock's back, rocked back and forth with each slow push of his fingers.

"And?" he whispered, so soft Sherlock had to hold his breath to hear.

This time the great detective didn't pretend to think about his answer. Instead he mustered all that considerable brilliance (heavily compromised as it currently was), and thought about the question.

Until the man slid his hand around Sherlock's cock and started stroking.

"Shit."

The detective didn't need to detect to know the man briefly grinned.

There was nothing for it: Sherlock better talk fast.

"And for no reason other than…g-god…love. Love, love, nnnn—love, ridiculous, compromising, glorious defect that it is. He loves me simply because he—" a deep, groaning breath, "loves m-me. A-and—" Hands fisting in his own coat and with a deep moan, Sherlock started coming.

The man rode that orgasm with him, rocking his body in time with Sherlock's, holding him close, gentling him through. They both let it take awhile, let it take so long that the man had time to whisper a few things.

"Yes, that's it, that's all, love. Just love."

The man, John Watson, pressed his cheek to a dashing winter coat and raised his voice above that whisper so the one man who mattered was sure to hear what he said. "You're rare as a supernova, as brilliant as one too, but I love you because of everything that you are, not just a few grace notes. I love your beauty but I love the terrible bags you get under your eyes when you've drunk so much coffee you're dehydrated and vibrating and pasty and so not pretty." John giggled, Sherlock's laugh rumbled hoarse and low.

"I love you when you're the smartest man in the whole damn room and when you don't know how to use a vending machine to get some crisps. I love you because you love me and I love you even when you ignore me. I love you now, and yesterday, and if I am very lucky indeed I will love you forever. I will love you when your mood is black and I know that you'll love me when I limp, when I'm slow, when I absolutely and positively don't give one shit about that stupid experiment that's been taking up the upstairs bath for three months now. Oh good god I will love you when you're depressed and when you're not and…and…I will and I do love you Sherlock." John sighed and then he said so softly only he really heard. "I just _do."_

* * *

Over the years there are a dozen times a dozen strange things these two will do. This is merely one.

For two men grounded in science, each in his own way, they're fanciful creatures, inclined toward fanciful things. Costumes for cases? No problem. Inventing [a trio of children](http://archiveofourown.org/works/704251/chapters/1298990)? Old hat. Sexual role-playing so that one of them—when he's failed to solve a particularly vicious crime—won't fall into a depressive spiral of self-doubt so profound it takes him low for long, long weeks at a time? Oh most surely.

Neither of them ever really know what form the distractions will take and it doesn't really matter. What matters is making the machinations work, finding a way to stop the despair.

If pretending to be a rent boy for the night—one with remarkable insight into his pretty little punter, it's true—did this even in part, even for an hour, for John that was enough. That was more than enough. Quite honestly John would walk the length of doomed Grace Street in nothing but fishnets and a fucking smile if it'd hold the black dog at bay.

But know this: John does and will do these things not because he sees himself as less, but because he sees Sherlock as more. Sherlock changes the world, in ways grand, clear, and definitive. _He makes a difference,_ again and again and in a way no one else can.

And so for John he is worth the time. He's worth the games, and the silliness, the cosseting, and the care. Sherlock is, was, and ever shall be worth every effort John can make. Because he loves him. And because _he_ loves _him._

Always.

_I keep all my John and Sherlock stories in the same universe. So when I asked for a prompt and[Livia Carica](http://livia-carica.tumblr.com/) said, "John as a rent boy," well, this was the only way it made sense to me. When the [black dog comes for Sherlock](http://archiveofourown.org/works/481967/chapters/839894)…what wouldn't John do to divert him? Nothing's the answer to that. I think there's absolutely nothing John wouldn't do._


End file.
